Mental Fitness

11 May 2023 · 1 min

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A speaker proposes replacing the term "mental health" with "mental fitness," arguing the latter emphasizes an active, process-oriented approach and normalizes fluctuations (good and bad days) similar to physical fitness. They claim the term "mental health" perpetuates a disease-oriented framing and that mental fitness enables resilience and capacity to handle difficulty.

Chapters

I'm going to do this from now and I'm going to stop using the term mental health. I'm going to start using the term mental fitness because it speaks to a process, but it also speaks to good days and bad days, like when somebody is engaged in their own physical fitness. I know when I'm starting to get fit it's sometimes a little bit of a struggle, but I keep pushing through. And I also know when I'm physically fit that I'm actually able to manage difficult things more. So I know that I can lift heavier weight and I know that I can push myself through pain. I know that I can run a longer distance because if I feel the physical pain, I know because I'm fit, I'm not going to actually damage my body. Mental fitness is the term because mental health is actually doing us a disservice. So I think we're perpetuating the disease state by calling it mental health.