Staying healthy both physically and mentally helps ensure that you can enjoy a life free from the issues that can be brought on by an unhealthy lifestyle of poor diet or poor nutrition, a lack of exercise, high levels of stress, lack of proper sleep and a lack of hydration as well as possible vices such as alcohol or tobacco.

When someone experiences a mental health issue there are often many underlying causes such as those mentioned in previous sections of this course, however the above can also contribute to how we feel, think and behave. If we ensure that we follow a good diet, with a good amount of exercise, hydration and sleep, with a good method of reducing our stress, then we can go a long way towards ensuring that we stay mentally healthy during our lives.

There are a few areas which we can include here which can also help us stay mentally healthy, positive and happy,

1. Reduce your stress on a daily basis - activities such as meditation, yoga, deep breathing can be a highly effective way to switch off, reduce your thoughts, promote a great healthy mind and to reduce your stress at the same time. Stress can be one of the main factors in the development of mental health issues, especially when the stress becomes overbearing and can lead to feeling like you cannot cope with the situation that you find yourself in. Reducing your stress can, therefore, allow the mind to settle and see things more clearly and often it can help us put less strain on ourselves.

2. Connect with other people - social interaction and forming and sustaining relationships are important for your mental health. wellbeing. Forming relationships can help you understand yourself better by understanding the view and opinions that others have about life. It can give you the opportunity to share positive experiences. It can provide you emotional support during times of stress or turmoil, Relationships with other people can help to keep you happy and engaged.

3. Maintain a healthy lifestyle - it is important for your wellbeing to maintain a healthy lifestyle as far as nutrition, physical health and rest is concerned. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle helps us boost our mood and increase our self-esteem. Helps us feel better and more alert, more awake and more energised. There are so many ways to stay healthy, with gyms, health food stores, leisure centres and yoga centres in most towns and cities across the country. Try writing down and recording the intake of your food and food type, the amount of exercise you do each week and any other activities which you can slowly increase in order to improve your physical health. When we stay physically healthy, our mental health can also be boosted from better blood flow to the brain, an oxygenation of the blood, better circulation and a boost in mood and alertness.

4. Challenge yourself - by learning a new skill or engaging in a new field of study, we boost the cells in our brain that are used for quick thinking and problem solving. By solving problems and using our creative thought, we are boosting our brain processing ability as well and slowly the depreciation of grey matter in the brain. When we are younger we get to challenge ourselves frequently, however when we reach older age this necessity decreases and so it is very important to set challenges for ourselves that can help maintain a healthy brain. Reading, writing, solving problems, quiz's, puzzles, creative expression, engaging in science or playing a musical instrument can all be ways to ensure that we use the capacity of the brain that is designed for skills. When we challenge ourselves, we become more mentally healthy and we often feel like we have accomplished something worthwhile.

5. Take time out - our wellbeing and mental health is often challenged the most when we are constantly being required to endure stress or to maintain a busy schedule or lifestyle, to such an extent that we don't give ourselves time out to look around us, relax, take in nature and to switch off from what we have been focussing so hard on. With busy jobs, busy family lives or all manner of other responsibilities to deal with, we often find that taking time out to recharge is the last thing on our agenda, however, by ensuring we take adequate breaks and we engage in activities in that time that are fruitful for our wellbeing, we will find that our mental health gets the boost it needs as our mind and body take a well needed break. Taking a bit of time out, or reducing our stress with meditation or yoga as explained above can actually have the affect of making our busy lives much more productive, with an energised body, an alert and creative mind, we often find that our problem solving capacity increases as does our ability to resume the pressures of the working week in a much better capacity, ensuring our mental state stays healthy and happy.