Seeking Professional Help Mental and emotional health is fundamental for personal happiness, including the ability to develop close friendships and intimate relationships and to gain satisfaction from work, hobbies, and other interests.
Mental fitness is just as important a factor in overall health as is physical well-being.
Yet mental illness, in one form or another, is quite common. Many of a physician's daily consultations involve some mental or emotional problem. One in every ten persons at some time during his or her life needs treatment in a hospital for a mental disorder. Given the right combination of past experiences and current stresses, anyone can develop psychiatric difficulty, but mental health experts do not know the specific causes of all types of mental illness. Stress, however, seems to play a major role in triggering emotional problems.