I stand with the saying “a healthy outside starts from the inside.”In other words the mind comes before the body, you always gotta set your mind right before physically doing something.I believe our mental health is more critical to our American lifestyle because it is more complex to improve your mental health than your physical health.Having a weak mental state not only leads to things like suicide and drug abuse but it also affects the body physically.Leading to things like diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure because of eating disorder.Also mental illness in America is a big issue and students have it the worst having to face descrimination.

I believe our mental health is more critical to our American lifestyle because it is more complex to improve your mental health than your physical health.But when I ask a question like ¿In what ways do you feel that you are in control of your mental and physical health?I know a lot of people will have a more distinct answer when It comes to mental health than physical health.In other words mental health is more complex than physical health because physical health consists of a diet, sleep and exercise while mental health depends on our individual emotional, psychological, social well-being and stresses of life.For example I would answer this question by saying “when it comes to my physical health I like to go to the gym at least four times a week.And when it comes to my mental I try to stay positive and pacient during hard times and practicing gratitude is something that helps a lot.”But to maintain a salubrious mental health, it is more complicated than just trying to stay positive.When thinking about health the first thing that comes to mind is physical health- exercising, drinking water, healthy eating etc.And while physical health does play a large role in keeping our bodies in shape and functioning properly, Mental health is just as important as physical health if not more but that’s just my opinion.“Our behaviors, such as how often we exercise, also influence our health. Environmental and physical conditions also play a role.”I believe physical health depends on mental health because you’re not going to workout if you feel depressed or have some type of mental problem.Therefore physical health is part of mental health,the way you look and your physical representation to others.

What is mental illness? While mental health is always there and it may be positive or negative, mental illness affects a person’s ability to function over a long period of time.In America the amount of students with mental illness symptoms has increased dramatically in the past few years.In the article “A systematic review: Students with mental health problems—A growing problem.”Students who suffer from mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders are mostly caused by stigma.These students go through descrmination of their mental illness and are excluded from society.However in the US we have a higher rate of mental illness in students than any other country.A table on the article proves my point showing a variety of countries and the  summary of observations and findings for those countries “90% had NOT sought campus based counselling. Major problems included symptoms, poor grades (19%), social isolation (31%), conflict and inadequate finances. 63% returned to college three or more times.” In fact only the Symptoms of mental illness and stigma negatively affected not only students’ self esteem but also their academics and finances as well.These are all causes of build up distress and untreated mental problems.The article also states “90% of students never used counseling for emotional problems. More than three-quarters of students with significant distress did not receive counseling.”This because of the ongoing descrimination against students’ mental problems that lead students to not seek help because of the stigma.You could only imagine what other factors, depression, self-harm and even eating disorders.

What if I told you a disease like diabetes isn’t only caused by your poor diet or physical inactivity. How do you think someone ends up with diabetes? First you gotta think of why their diet is so disordered and irregular.When a person has a mental illness like eating disorder they have anxiety to always eat or favor junk food.In the Article “How important is mental health involvement in integrated diabetes care?”Self-management is a big topic on how diabetes should be handled and mental illness, like depression, anxiety and eating disorders all have a negative impact on effective self-management of diabetes.According to the article “Supported self-management is key to good diabetes care, but the high rates of mental health difficulties in diabetes can hinder effective self-management. Depression, anxiety, eating disorders and cognitive impairment, as well as interpersonal difficulties and personality disorder are all known to have a detrimental effect on effective self-care and addressing these has been demonstrated to improve health and financial outcomes.”In other words implementing mental health in to patients who have eating disorder could help reduce rates of diabetes.This shows how diabetes isn’t just about having a poor diet or because of physical inactivity, but because of mental illness that prevents patients from have self management.

To conclude, our mental health is more critical to our American lifestyle because it is more complex to improve your mental health than your physical health.Students in America have it the worst as they suffer from mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders which are mostly caused by descrmination of their mental illness and are excluded from society.Physical diseases such as diabetes aren’t only caused by physical health factors but also mental illness such as anxiety and depression.Bringing me to my solution that implementing mental health and enforcing it would change our American lifestyle forever.