adminDr Mazvita Machinga Mental Health
HAVE you ever thought about this? Apart from healthy diet, exercises and medication, strong social networks enrich your life and improve your mental well-being.
Scientific and cultural evidence show that involvement in social relationships benefits mental health. Human beings are social creatures. Some individuals live lives that are highly social and connected to others, while others are either very much alone, detached or aggressively anti-social.
Where are you? You need to maintain social connectivity for mental health and longevity. Extreme loneliness, picking fights with others etc., increase your chances of premature death by 14 percent.
Living an isolated life or having continuous uproars with others can: increase your stress hormone, disrupt sleep, elevate blood pressure,increase depressive feeling, and lower overall subjective well-being. Reading our newspapers, listening to news and following community life, is all about relationships and how they affect people’s lives.
For instance, in past issues of The Manica Post we have read; father burning daughter with charcoal, explicit pictures wreck marriage, parents wrangle over child custody, mother drags violent son to court , all indicating the extent to which social relationships disturb people’s lives. This article is about relationships and how they affect mental health.
Research has found that there is a link between social relationships and sound mental health. Healthy social relationships can be a central source of emotional support for most people. Dozens of studies have shown that people who have satisfying relationships with family, friends, and their community are happier, handle life problems better, and live longer.
Dependable and honest relationships are associated with sound mental health. However, let me say right away, while I acknowledge the role of social relationship in health living, I know there is a dark side of social relationships and that social relationships can be extremely stressful (Walen and Lachman 2000).
Nonetheless, this article focuses on benefits and importance of healthy social connections not underrating the dark side when social relationships are not handled constructively and well.
What makes social
connections helpful?
Social connections not only bring pleasure, they also influence our long-term mental health just as powerful as adequate sleep, healthy diet, and not smoking. Healthy social relationships help relieve harmful levels of stress, which can adversely affect coronary arteries, gut function, insulin regulation, the immune system and others.
Another line of research suggests that social networks and caring behaviours trigger the release of stress-reducing hormones, builds confidence, and fosters a sense of meaning and purpose in life (Cohen 2004). Healthy supportive social ties trigger physiological sequelae (e.g., reduced blood pressure, reduced heart rate, and stress hormones) that are beneficial to health and minimize unpleasant arousal(Uchino 2006).
The support offered by a caring support network can provide a buffer against the effects of stress, increases your sense of belonging and purpose. Most striking evidence comes from prospective studies of mortality across nations which show that individuals with the lowest level of involvement in social relationships are more likely to get sick or even die than those with greater involvement (House, Landis and Umberson, 1988).
Another study found that, among adults with coronary heart diseases, the socially isolated had a risk of subsequent cardiac death 2.4 times greater than their more socially connected peers (Brummett et.al, 2001). All these studies provide an insight into the association between relationships and mental health. So, it is all up to you to ensure that you stay mentally healthy by connecting well with others. The following are ways you can stay connected.
a) Have someone in your life you feel affirms who you are. Have a confidant you trust.
b) Initiate relationships and know what topics to talk about.
c) Participate in family gatherings, getting together with friends, in your religious, community, and workplace activities. Such occasions are an opportunity to check in with each other, exchange ideas, and perhaps lend a supportive ear or shoulder.
d) Stay in touch with neighbours, relatives, co-workers and friends, celebrate events together, eat together, laugh together and exercise together.
e) Be part of a group or collective beyond individual existence e.g. men, youth or women’s fellowship groups, girls’ scouts, peer networks, bible study group, alcohol anonymous etc.
Dr Mazvita Machinga Ph.D. a qualified Psychotherapist in Mutare who offers professional counselling and psychotherapy [email protected] or call 0771 754 519.
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