Mental Health

What is mental health? Quite simply, it is the health of our mental processes which include our emotions, our perceptions, our thoughts, and our cognitive functioning. Mental health can also include our behavior – humans use their mental state to guide most of their behaviors. If you are having problems with regulating your emotional state, your perceptions, your thoughts, or your behavior, then you might have a mental health problem. Psychiatrists are physicians who spend four years of specialty training in mental health. Just as a surgeon may use different tools to manage a problem in your body, a psychiatrist may use different tools to manage your mental health. Some psychiatrist tools include healthy lifestyle counseling, psychotherapy, psychiatric medications, group therapy, and psychoeducation.