Mental health

1. Be mindful - Being more mindful can improve the immune system and increase joy. It can also prevent depression and reduce stress.

   • Be present in the moment, for example when you're eating, talking to someone, or going for a walk

   • Take note of your feelings and thoughts

   • Be curious and interested

   • Notice things around you

2. Be active - Physical activity has countless positive effects on health! It provides increased quality of life, reduces stress, can improve memory, improve sleep, reduce mental ailments and much more!

   • Find an activity you like

   • Go for a little walk in your local area

   • Arrange to do an activity with someone else

3. Keep learning - The brain changes when we learn, and learning can increase quality of life and resilience. It can also build confidence and give you new opportunities.

   • Try something new

   • Find a new hobby

   • Try a new dinner recipe

   • Check out a new course

4. Connect - Good relationships are incredibly important for our mental health. Being with others can help us through difficult periods, improve mood, and give us a sense of belonging.

   • Call a friend or family member

   • Stay in touch with those around you

   • Meet new people, for example through volunteer work, at work, through sports, etc.

   • Ask someone to go to a café or for a walk Invite someone for dinner

5. Give - Giving to others can increase the feeling of control, provide higher quality of life and joy.

   • Do something for someone else

   • Help a stranger

   • Give someone your time or attention

Mental health involves how you feel about yourself, your relationships, and your emotional life on a daily basis.

• Mental distress is something most of us experience from time to time. This term covers conditions that are perceived as burdensome but are not so severe as to be characterized as disorders. Often - but not always - these affect our thoughts, feelings, behaviors and ways of being and can result in decreased quality of life and impact how well we function in everyday life.

• Mental disorders denote diseases with more pronounced symptoms and signs that reduce quality of life. These are conditions where certain diagnostic criteria are met and are generally perceived as more burdensome than mental distress. Mental disorders include various diagnoses, such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, with various symptoms. Mental disorders often affect thoughts, feelings, behavior and ways of being more than in mental distress cases and can often lead to decreased quality of life and affect how well we function in everyday life. Many people diagnosed with a mental disorder will not necessarily be perceived as sick.

Mental distress can develop into a mental disorder if experienced as too great over too long a time period, and when the criteria for clinical diagnosis set by a therapist are met. There are several different mental disorders. The most common ones are anxiety, depression and substance abuse. More extensive assessments are made to map out mental disorders, for example through a clinical examination by a doctor or psychologist.

Common mental distress

Mental distress is something most of us experience from time to time. These are problems such as feeling sad, feeling worried, and stress. Such feelings are normal to feel and are simply common variations in our behavior and emotional life. The problems can be experienced as burdensome varying degrees, from mild to stronger problems, without necessarily being characterized as a disorder. Many will experience significant mental distress in shorter or longer periods, without necessarily requiring follow-up services.

Feeling sad

Feeling sad can result in a feeling of less joy and drive, and a worse mood. This can arise due to difficulties and challenges in life. All people feel this occasionally. There can also be daily variation in how you feel and experience everyday life. If you're sad it can feel like a lump or void in your stomach, a lump in your throat or that you're heavy in your body. Although you may feel sad it doesn't mean that you're depressed. According to NHI, a depression is "a condition that is characterized by a reduced mood, loss of interest in and loss of energy or increased fatigue". If you're depressed, it will affect your everyday life for a long time (weeks and months) and can affect your ability to handle studies, school, and work.

Distress

A stress response is perfectly normal and necessary for us. If we feel threatened we can get a physical response, fight or flight response. This reaction is supposed to help us survive. When the response works as it should, we get a faster pulse and breathe faster. The stress hormone cortisol releases energy in the muscles and liver, the blood vessels constrict and the blood is led to important muscle groups so that the body gets extra energy to defend itself. The immune system also sharpens up under acute stress (short-term stress).

Stress can be both positive and negative for us. To understand this better, different types of stress are classified as healthy stress, acute stress, and long-term or chronic stress.

Healthy stress is necessary for us to develop positively and lead a good life. This type of stress causes us to feel tension and excitement, we get a faster pulse, but without experiencing fear or threat. It causes us to be more alert in situations where we need to perform at our best, for example with a challenging work task. Stress can also be found in connection with exercise, sporting activity, and infatuation.

Acute stress is stress that causes one to react quickly if something sudden and surprising happens. This can, for example, be when something unpredictable happens in traffic or if you oversleep for work. This is not negative, as long as you find ways to deal with it. It's only when you can't find ways to relax or turn off the acute stress that stress can become something negative for us. This is called chronic stress.

Stress can also be negative, burdensome and potentially harmful to us if it persists over longer periods, this is called chronic or long-term stress. This is stress that persists over time due to factors that are burdensome and feel inevitable, such as an unhappy marriage/family life or stressful work day over a longer period of time. Chronic stress can give both mental and physical negative health effects because the stress response leads to an increase in readiness. When the system is overloaded, it can lead to a weakened immune system. Chronic stress can also trigger various autoimmune diseases such as diabetes, lupus, and MS.

Feeling worried

Feeling worried is an experience of mild worry and one can feel anxious and tense. It's natural to worry, and we must distinguish between this and morbid worry (anxiety). When you have a mild concern, you also manage to put it aside so that you're not thinking about it all the time. If the concern persists over time and you experience fear and threat due to worry, it may be a question of an anxiety disorder.

REMEMBER!

It's normal to experience that your mental health varies throughout life. It's very individual what feels like good mental health and what makes the burden too great. Good mental health can be feeling a sense of belonging, meaning in life, and enjoyment in your own daily life.

Sleep

Good sleep has healing, regenerating, and preventative effects on the body and the brain. It's important to stress that there are significant individual differences in sleep needs; for adults, it's normal to sleep between six and eight hours per night. Above all else, the quality of sleep is more important than the number of hours slept. A good night's sleep has positive effects on well-being, mood, and concentration, increased emotional balance, and can help you better withstand various burdens and pains. On the other hand, a sleep deficit can make you more susceptible to physical and mental illness and injuries. Below are some tips on how to improve sleep quality (mentalhelse.no):

• Darkness, quiet and moderate temperature in the bedroom

• Get up and go to bed at fixed times - also on the weekend, and stick to the routines even if you have had little sleep

• Avoid consuming caffeinated drinks such as coffee, cola, strong tea, energy drink in the hours before bedtime. Also, avoid smoking or snuffing

• Take a bath/shower to relax

• Avoid heavy meals before bedtime, but feel free to eat something simple like a sandwich or a banana (banana contains sleep-inducing substance)

• Get enough exercise during the day, and some daylight especially during the winter season

• Create fixed routines in connection with bedtime, e.g. listen to calm music, read a little in a book, evening care and teeth brushing

• If you're just lying there tossing and turning and can't manage to sleep, get up for a little while instead. Remind yourself that it isn't a disaster if you don't get all the hours of sleep you had planned. The quality of sleep is more important than the number of hours you sleep

• Try some relaxation exercises

• Be aware of screen time (how you use, pc, TV, mobile, tablet) in the evening

You can read more about the Directorate of Health's good advice for better sleep here.

Diet

The food and drink we choose to consume, and choose not to consume, can affect our physical and mental health. A varied and healthy diet in line with the State's advice for nutrition and health's recommendations can help reduce the potential negative effects of prolonged stress, build up the immune system and improve mood. It is documented that a diet high in fruits, vegetables, berries, whole grain products, fish and limited amounts of processed meat, red meat, salt and sugar can improve mental health.

See the Directorate of Health's dietary advice here.

Furthermore, the effect of social contact on our mental health is well documented, so a good idea can also be to prioritize communal meals in social gatherings. Going on a specific diet can have some unfortunate effect on mental health because this can lead to social isolation as communal meals may be dropped in favor of following a diet (FHI).

Social interaction

Good relationships are important for us, and socializing with friends and family is important for our mental health. We do not necessarily need a huge network of friends and family, but we need a few relationships that are close and good. The main source of happiness for us humans is supportive relationships and a sense of belonging. Belonging, love, support and recognition are fundamental needs and important factors that promote our coping, quality of life and health. A lack of support from others is associated with reduced coping with crises and stresses, unhealthy lifestyles and increased psychological and physiological stress. We need relationships where we can both receive support, but also give support to others. If you need social "refill" you can, for example, call a friend, go for a walk with an acquaintance, participate in a course or an activity in the neighborhood or have a chat with the neighbor.

These are tools that are always with us, but often get a little forgotten or "mystified". Meditation is for everyone and can yield moderate improvements in mental health.

Many believe the goal of meditation is complete peace or stilling the mind, but that's not it. The goal of meditation is to learn to accept your feelings and thoughts, without being overly critical. It is, for example, about being in the present moment and accepting the situation as it is. Allow thoughts to come, register them before you let them pass.

If we consider our thoughts as clouds, some days have a dense and low cloud cover, while other days have sun and blue sky. One is not better than the other, but we know that there are good days after a rainy day and rainy days after sunshine. This is part of life and if we have this picture of our thoughts, it can be easier to find acceptance when thoughts storm.

During meditation and breathing, you do not need anything more than yourself and the place you are at. You can sit, lie, walk or stand. Often it can be nice to find a quiet place where you can sit comfortably and undisturbed, and just focus on the task. Below are some examples of meditations that you can try out:

• 5-15 minute meditation for beginners:

  Find yourself a place where you can sit in silence for 5-15 minutes without anyone disturbing you. Sit in a comfortable position, preferably upright on a chair. Try to calm your thoughts without forcing them. You can either close your eyes or focus on something specific. Then you can focus on your breath. Do not try to control it, but observe how the stomach and chest move in time with the breath. If there are any thoughts or worries, you can register them, and then let them go.

• Body Scanning:

  In this form of meditation, you focus on one body part at a time and observe how it feels in that area. You can start from the top of the head where you just observe the thoughts first, then focus on relaxing the muscles in the face, then you can direct the focus to the shoulders - how it feels here, then move on through the whole body. Finally, you can observe how the whole body feels. It is perfectly normal for maybe thoughts of past and future to come, it does not mean you are doing something wrong, but try to observe the thoughts and then let them wander on.

• Guided online meditations

  
  Mini meditations
  

  Daily Calm, 10 minute meditation

Relaxation

Relaxation is a form of training where you work to make contact with the body, notice if you tense the muscles or are able to relax and find peace and rest. Relaxation is often called relaxation or stress management - it is about awakening the body's inherent ability to relax.

This is an ability that everyone has, but we often need to find back to regular relaxation training. There are many different exercises that can be used. Progressive relaxation is a common method, where the muscles alternately tense and relax.

You can listen to audio files with guided relaxation here. 

Breath and breathing techniques

In addition to meditation, various breathing techniques can make you feel a little better. The breath is a tool that we carry with us everywhere, all the time. Far too many of us breathe shallowly and quickly. By breathing slowly you can reduce the level of stress and tension in the body. There are several different techniques for calming down using the breath.

Using various breathing techniques can result in improvements in stress tolerance, sleep, energy levels, mood, focus, creativity, and regulation of emotions. As little as 5 minutes per day with a breathing technique can yield major improvements in well-being and reduce stress. When you use a breathing technique you consciously breathe in a specific pattern which can give a feeling of direct control over your own body, which can reduce feelings of anxiety.

There are several different techniques, and what distinguishes them from each other is the duration and intensity of inhalation and exhalation. An effective technique for reducing stress and improving mood is cyclic sighing. See the figure below for different techniques you can try out.

The cascade effects of physical activity are so great that movement and activity should be implemented as a "medicine" for the treatment and prevention of physical and mental disease. It is well documented that physical activity can prevent mental health problems and help to reduce some of the problems if they have already occurred.

Physical activity can:

• Reduce mental health problems such as stress, low mood, and anxiety

• Reduce anxiety and depression Increase joy and quality of life

• Provide a sense of mastery

• Give you more energy and vitality

• Reduce stress

• Increase self-image and self-confidence

• Contribute to better sleep

Being regularly physically active can reduce mental health problems (stress, low mood, anxiety) and disorders (for example, anxiety and depression). One of the reasons for this may be because physical activity contributes to increased self-confidence, self-control, and provides a sense of mastery. Regular physical activity can also reduce the level of cortisol in the body. Cortisol is often referred to as a stress hormone because it is part of the body's physiological stress response.

It is important to find a form of activity that you enjoy and feel you can master. This could, for example, be a walk in the forest, sign up for a group session, go skiing, or cycle a trip.

For some, physical activity can feel uncomfortable because it activates the sympathetic nervous system and causes symptoms such as increased heart rate, increased ventilation (you breathe more), and sweat. These symptoms can be confused with some of the physical reactions to various types of anxiety. It is important to emphasize that this is completely normal and not something you need to worry about.

How little is enough?

It doesn't take much physical activity to achieve beneficial effects. Everything is better than nothing!

It is important to start at a low level to get a feeling of mastery. Eventually, you can gradually increase the activity level and intensity.

The Norwegian Directorate of Health recommends that all adults and elderly people engage in moderate physical activity for at least 2.5 to 5 hours each week. This corresponds to around 20-40 minutes each day. It is also recommended to do exercises that increase muscle strength for the large muscle groups at least two days a week.

For many, it is difficult to reach these recommendations. In this context, it is important to point out that research shows that as little as one hour of moderate physical activity during the week can help prevent depression! Spread over the week, it is therefore not more than just under 10 minutes a day that is required. In periods where you experience mental problems, it is important to remind yourself that a little is better than nothing. Try to lower the demands you place on yourself.

How can you get started?

• "10-minute rule" - The recommendations from the Health Directorate can be divided into small batches of about 10 minutes. In this way, the threshold is a little lower to move

• Arrange and go for a walk with a friend If you can, take your work meeting or favorite podcast in your ear and go for a walk in daylight

• Daylight and a trip out in nature do wonders for our mental health!

• Find a staircase and go up and down a few times

• Walk or cycle to work/school

• Do a little housework or gardening

• Do not underestimate the effect of increasing your everyday activity: choose stairs instead of the elevator, walk/cycle to work or other appointments, go a detour after picking up the mail, house and garden work, get off the bus a few stops before you really need to, etc.