What does psychological health look like? Not what you might think

This article that I’m going to excerpt briefly below brings to mind one of my favorite quotes. Chances are I’ve used it on this blog before as it’s a sort of mantra in my life. It’s by Krishnamurti:

It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Success by the standard of todays values is basically not healthy!

The article I’m sharing is by Douglas Labier entitled: What Psychological Health Looks Like :

To the extent there’s a conventional view of psychological health at all, it’s mostly equated with good life-management and coping skills. That is, managing stress in your work and personal life, and coping with — if not resolving — whatever emotional conflicts you brought with you into adulthood.

A less visible view of psychological health also exists: Successful adaptation to and embracing of the dominant values, behavior and attitudes of the society or milieu you’re a part of. The problem here is that such socially-conditioned norms have also embodied greed, self-absorption, domination, destructiveness and divisiveness. They’ve been equated with “success” in adult life.

The upshot is that you can be well-adapted to dominant attitudes and behavior that are, themselves, psychologically unhealthy. So you may be “well-adjusted” to an unhealthy life….

…So, I propose that psychological health — in emotions, attitudes, mental outlook and behavior — consists of whatever builds, creates, grows and sustains; rather than that which exploits, extracts or destroys.

That definition of psychological health, for individuals, institutions and public policies, is grounded in explicit values: Building and creating for all, rather than consuming and taking for the benefit of the few.

Those values, in turn, steer you towards wanting to develop and engage your human capacities in the service of something larger than just amassing or extracting benefits for yourself. That focus is what’s known as the “common good,” which, I argued in a previous post, is on the rise in our society. read the rest here