Mental Wealth

• We might benefit from approaching mental health like we invest in anything else in our lives (finances, relationships, careers, physical health, etc), where one builds wealth in this area by continuous, conscious investment.

• To the wider public, mental health is synonymous with mental illness. Our notion of physical health is, however, very different than our notion of physical illness.

• When it comes to mental health, our society approaches it like we did with physical health 50 years ago. We only think about it when something is wrong.

• Estimates say that 83% of us will be hit with a mental health crisis in our lives, we can all make the choices to invest wisely in this area to improve our ‘mental durability’ to deal with it properly.

• In my 19 years of paying close attention to mental health, my experience has taught me that there are five foundations towards a concept I will call ‘mental wealth’ — sleep, diet, exercise, stress management, and exogenous compounds (anything from coffee to alcohol to prescription medication).