It is heartwarming to know that since this past decade, mental health is beginning to garner the attention it deserves. Being an essential aspect of an individual’s overall health, Mental health is to be cared for in the right earnest. When WHO (World Health Organization) acknowledged that:
Health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, which is much more than just the absence of disease or infirmity
it left no doubt regarding mental health being the pivot of a fulfilling existence of any individual. The basic psychological processes can be considered as key ingredients for one’s mental health.
Learning
Learning is acquiring new knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. All of us are acquiring some new learning almost every day. At times it is about such finer things that we fail to acknowledge it is any ‘new’ learning. The world underwent considerable new learning during the pandemic, including learning things as formidable as taking our work online!
Memory
New connections are made in our brains and new memories are formed continuously. Then there are times when we bring these memories over to working memory and create further neural connections.
Perception
In the dynamically changing contexts we constantly alter our perception and make new interpretations of things and situations. Social perception is, in psychology and other cognitive sciences, that part of the perception that allows us to understand the individuals and groups of our social world. This help us to make sense of the world around us and adapt better.
Attention
Attention includes the allocation of processing resources. Attention is best described as the sustained focus of cognitive resources on information while filtering or ignoring extraneous information. Overt attention is the act of directing sense organs towards a stimulus source. Covert attention is the act of mentally focusing on one of several possible sensory stimuli. Thus, it is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment over other things.
When an individual finds engagement in ‘Art’ these basic mental processes are reinforced. One is involved in new learning, making newer neural connections, focusing and sustaining attention, and all that justifies “engagement”. Not only are there studies documenting the mental health benefits of practicing art but we also come across personal experiences of people experiencing higher overall life satisfaction while being engaged in ‘Art’. Although psychological resources are readily available to us, a lot of us experience a decline in the efficiency of the basic processes while we undergo challenging phases in our life (which we singularly identify as stress). We are unable to focus our attention; or we forget about essential things and the like, are but common to our experience. As a cumulative effect of these, our overall functioning appears compromised. It is more often that we tend to correct the external stress or even wait for things to get better from outside and disengage from helping our internal resources. When I see people going back to practicing their music skills or painting or dance forms, I like to believe that they are creating an opportunity for mental health workouts. I appreciate all those who are practicing any form of ‘Art’, for, they are investing in their mental health earnestly.