Mental health

Mental health or illness is difficult to define and its prevalence in the population is difficult to measure, but it is counted as one of the major public health problems today.

In the survey, we capture the symptoms of headaches, nervousness, unease or anxiety, fatigue, stress, sleeping difficulties, diminished mental well-being (GHQ12), suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide. To measure mental well-being, we use the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ12), which describes mental well-being and measures mental reactions to strain rather than mental illness.

Stress is discussed a great deal today and considerable significance is often attributed to stress for the onset of illness, such as cardiovascular disease and motor organ disorders. However, stress is a vague term and means many different things to different people today. Harmful stress arises if the stress reaction is extensively prolonged and the individual is not given the opportunity to recuperate.

Good sleep is central to health because it is vital to physical and mental recuperation and has a strong tie to mental well-being. A number of studies have shown that sleeping too little and sleeping too much are both health risks. Good sleep is considered to be a long, uninterrupted period of sleep, and poor sleep is usually considered to include being woken a minimum of five times.

Suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide are significantly more common than suicide itself. Because only half of these cases are estimated to seek care, it is important to ask the question in a survey. Suicide among young people is primarily due to mental illness, although heredity and other factors in the environment can have a considerable impact. Prior attempts at suicide are strongly related to committing suicide later in life.