WHAT IS SOUND MENTAL HEALTH?

 Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, once said that his objective was "to substitute for neurotic misery ordinary human unhappiness." That gloomy remark added weight to an impression that good health, physical and mental, is simply the absence of overwhelming distress. This, to most physicians today, is much too restrictive and limited a view. To merely exist without pain is not enough. Health, physical or mental, should be measured not by whether or not something hurts but by pleasure and achievement. A person free of emotional distress cannot merely on that basis be categorized as mentally healthy.

Mental health is not simple to define. Some people consider that to be mentally healthy is to be like the majority, despite the fact that history has shown that in a decadent society such as Nazi Germany the majority can be brutal and sadistic. Some people feel that to be mentally healthy is to be happy, though some obviously insane people are "happy." "Maturity" is another word used as a synonym for mental health, though adolescents can be healthy without being mature.

 Physicians think of a normal person as one who adjusts to his surroundings, the world he lives in and the people in it, and also to his own potentialities for living, which may include making realistic efforts to change the world about him for the better. By abnormal behavior, physicians mean inappropriate or ineffective methods of getting along in one's surroundings.

For example, a person who is afraid of being hit by a car might refuse to go outdoors; this might relieve his fear but obviously would not be a satisfactory solution. When we examine abnormal behavior carefully, we see that it consists of techniques for adjusting to situations, techniques that are not adequate but are used because they satisfy in some way, or at least are more satisfying than anything else the individual has tried. 

Among other questions physicians may want answered before deciding about an individual's state of mental health are: Is he or she capable of loving someone else? Is he or she reliable, contented, and productive in his or her work? Is he or she able to appreciate the commonplace wonders of the earth?