5 min read
As World Mental Health Day approaches on 10 October, it is worth taking a closer look at what we call “mental health” and where the line lies between everyday emotional distress and mental illness.
By Dr. Maria K. Jimmy
We have become so comfortable with the language of mental health.
We call ourselves ‘anxious’ when an important decision keeps us awake at night, ‘depressed’ when a difficult week leaves us exhausted and unhappy, ‘traumatised’ when something painful happens to us, and ‘mentally unwell’ when we find ourselves struggling to cope with a situation that once seemed manageable.
In many ways, this greater willingness to talk about mental health and emotional wellbeing is a good thing. For generations, people were taught to hide psychological distress, particularly when there was no visible illness to explain it.
But there is another problem alongside this progress: we are sometimes beginning to use the language of mental illness to describe every form of psychological discomfort.
A person dislikes the way they look and calls it ‘body dysmorphia’. Someone who prefers their kitchen to be exceptionally neat thinks they have ‘OCD’.
While these experiences can be deeply distressing, they can also be completely human.
So where exactly is the line between normal emotional distress, situational stress and a mental health disorder?
Mental Health Is Not the Same as Mental Illness
The World Health Organization defines mental health as a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realise their abilities, learn and work well, and contribute to their communities.
It is therefore much broader than the presence or absence of a psychiatric diagnosis.
Our mental health exists on a continuum, and it can change in response to our biology, relationships, environment, circumstances and experiences.
Mental illness, meanwhile, refers to clinically significant disturbances in a person’s cognition, emotional regulation or behaviour, generally associated with substantial distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.
Being emotionally distressed is not the same as having a mental disorder.
If you lose someone you love and spend weeks crying, struggling to concentrate and feeling as though the world has suddenly become unfamiliar, that emotional response deserves care and compassion.
It does not automatically mean that you have a psychiatric disorder.
If you lose your job and feel frightened about your future, that anxiety makes sense in the context of what has happened.
If you look at photographs of yourself and wish you looked different, that dissatisfaction may be painful without necessarily being a symptom of a mental illness.
Sometimes, a difficult feeling is simply an appropriate response to a difficult circumstance.
When Body Image Starts Affecting Your Mental Health
Appearance exists on a broad spectrum of body image and self-esteem concerns. Many people dislike aspects of their appearance and may wish they were thinner, taller, clearer-skinned or more conventionally attractive.
In a culture filled with edited photographs and carefully curated lives, social comparison has become so easy.
Body dysmorphic disorder, however, involves a persistent preoccupation with perceived flaws that are minor or unnoticeable to others, often accompanied by behaviours such as mirror checking, excessive grooming, reassurance seeking or constant comparison.
The key difference is the level of distress and impact on daily life.
At the same time, body image concerns should not be dismissed as superficial. When a person’s sense of attractiveness, belonging or self-worth becomes heavily dependent on their appearance, the emotional impact can be significant, even before it develops into a diagnosable mental health condition.
When Your Definition of Success Starts Affecting Your Mental Health
Appearance is only one way we measure ourselves. For many of us, achievement becomes another mirror.
We look at our salary, qualifications, career progression, relationship status, number of followers, possessions or professional recognition and turn them into measurements of our own worth.
Someone else’s success can begin to feel like evidence of our own inadequacy, especially when social media constantly presents us with carefully selected versions of other people’s lives.
This can cause genuine emotional distress, anxiety and low self-esteem without necessarily being a mental illness.
A student who fails an examination may feel ashamed and frightened about the future. Someone watching their peers advance professionally may wonder whether they have fallen behind. These feelings can hurt precisely because what happened matters to them.
The important question is what happens over time and how much it begins to affect everyday life.
The event itself does not diagnose a mental illness; the response, its persistence, severity and impact matter.
Sometimes Your Circumstances Really Are the Problem
Sometimes emotional distress makes perfect sense because life itself is difficult.
A person living with financial insecurity may feel chronically anxious. Someone experiencing discrimination may become exhausted and demoralised. A person living in an unsafe relationship may feel frightened and hypervigilant. Someone grieving may struggle to imagine a future without the person they have lost.
Psychological support can help in all these situations, but it should not place the entire responsibility for suffering inside the individual’s mind.
The WHO recognises that mental health is influenced by social, economic and environmental circumstances, including the conditions in which people live and work.
Sometimes a person needs therapy or medication. At other times, they may need a safer home, financial stability, supportive relationships, rest, freedom from abuse or a healthier environment.
Mental healthcare should help people cope with difficult circumstances, while also recognising when the circumstances themselves need to change.
When Should You Seek Professional Mental Health Help?
You do not need to wait until you are in crisis to ask for help. A useful threshold is persistence, intensity and impairment.
Consider seeking professional support when distress persists, becomes more intense, or begins to interfere with your daily life, particularly when:
- Appearance concerns make you avoid people, photographs, intimacy or daily life
- Anxiety about success prevents you from resting or enjoying your achievements
- Sadness becomes persistent hopelessness, withdrawal or loss of interest
- You increasingly rely on alcohol, drugs, restrictive eating, compulsive exercise or self-harm to cope
- Your symptoms interfere with sleep, relationships, work, studies or self-care
- You have thoughts of suicide, self-harm, harming someone else, or feel unable to keep yourself safe
So, Is It Really Mental Health?
The answer can be yes, without the answer necessarily being mental illness.
A better question may be:
“What am I going through, how long has it lasted, how much is it affecting my life, and what do I need?”
That question leaves room for nuance.
It helps us recognise normal sadness, understand situational distress and identify when someone may need professional help, without turning every painful experience into a diagnosis.
And that will ultimately heal us.
Resources
- World Health Organization (WHO) — Mental health, mental disorders and social determinants of mental health.
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) — Mental health symptoms, severity, duration and when to seek professional help.
- NHS (National Health Service, UK) — Body dysmorphic disorder, symptoms and impact on daily life.
- American Psychiatric Association (APA) — Mental disorders, psychological distress and clinical impairment.
Image Note: The accompanying image is an AI-generated illustration. The person and setting depicted are fictional and do not represent any real individual or location.
You may wish to read these next:
