Mental health is not just the absence of mental illness, but instead describes the emotional, psychological, and social layers of our overall well-being. It allows us to persevere when we're buffeted by daily stressors. Alongside physical health, good mental health enables us to learn and work effectively, contribute to our families and communities, form relationships, and experience the full range of human emotions. We all may face mental health challenges—even if we don't have mental health disorders.
Our mental health is the result of many factors, including our genetics, support system, exercise, rest, nutrition, and life situation. But mental illness remains stigmatized in the US. Though most Americans say having a mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, 35% of US adults say they'd view someone differently if they knew that person had a mental health disorder. By one recent count, mental illness costs the US economy an estimated $282B annually.
Interest in mental well-being dates back to Hippocrates and the ancient Greek ideal of maintaining a healthy mind in a healthy body. But modern mental health's official precursor—called "mental hygiene," in 1843 by American psychiatrist William Sweetzer—paralleled the idea of attending to personal physical hygiene. It suggested that individuals needed to somehow maintain their mental well-being as they would their personal cleanliness, and thus mental health disorders were avoidable. Public outreach to help people sustain or improve their mental well-being didn't begin in earnest until decades later.
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It's a state of well-being that allows individuals to cope with daily stressors, realize their abilities, learn and work effectively, and contribute to their overall community. Inextricably linked to physical health, modern science indicates that mental health is a central component of our overarching ability to function and enjoy life.
These cartoons were curated around mental health themes in celebration of World Mental Health Day, which is observed annually on Oct. 10. The 15+ cartoons include thematic nods to weathering mental health challenges and looking forward to better times ahead.
In April 2025 polling, mental health remained highly stigmatized in the US. Though 88% of US adults say a mental health disorder is nothing to be ashamed about, 84% of them think the term "mental illness" carries a stigma and only about half of respondents said they'd feel comfortable sharing their mental health struggles with others.
Psychologists suggest that a helpful way to deal with negative thinking is to remind oneself that setbacks can simply be setbacks, rather than a grand catastrophe. Positive self-talk, focusing on the factors we can control, and being altruistic are other tools that can help one escape negative thinking.
That figure, estimated as part of a 2024 Yale analysis that aimed to better understand the macroeconomic implications of mental illness, included the costs of mental health treatment, income loss, and overarching economic setbacks associated with mental illness.
Activating your smile muscles—in this case, with electrical muscle stimulation that forces the corners of the mouth upward—makes people feel more positive, according to recent research. It won't cure depression, but it can have a small effect. Earlier faux smile research using different nonelectrical techniques had similar results, collectively suggesting that a smile may help brighten your day—even though the mechanisms for the happier result remain unclear.
Schizophrenia used to be considered a progressive disease that was beyond a patient's ability to manage. This article gives an in-depth look at OnTrackNY, a New York-based program that empowers patients to define the goals of their own treatment for psychotic disorders. At the time of this 2022 article, it consisted of 25 affiliate clinics and hospitals in 14 New York counties, with another seven sites then slated to begin offering services in 2023.
A patient living with anorexia nervosa was told by her insurance company that she wasn't sick enough to receive needed care. Her experience highlights how some insurers across Washington state focus on less useful metrics like body mass index and weight to gauge sickness instead of psychiatric symptoms that may better illustrate the urgency of receiving care.
This beautiful "scrollytelling" story—weaving together animations and text as a user scrolls down a page—takes a reader through a typical weekend day in 2021, drawing data from the American Time Use Survey. It underscores the loneliness that many people may experience, highlighting potential unaddressed mental health needs.
It was coined by American psychiatrist William Sweetzer to reference the same idea as personal hygiene. Mental hygiene, in Sweetzer's view, needed to be maintained in the same way people attend to their personal cleanliness, an idea that was supplanted by better understanding of the complexities of mental health disorder causes in the decades that followed.
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