By Dr. Gbonjubola Abiri

Imagine that your mind is a garden and you tend to it regularly. The scene is likely to look beautiful with lush greenery, neatly set out pathways and layouts surrounded by lovely, colourful flowers and a fountain.

Now, imagine that this garden is poorly tended to. There are overgrown, wilted or dead plants, fallen leaves, untrimmed hedges and shrubs making the garden look messy.

Clearly, an untended garden is a marked contrast to a well-kept one as it reflects neglect, overgrowth, and is a reflection of how things take course when no conscious and intentional care is shown.

Our minds, like a garden, can become disarrayed when they are untended; if we constantly feed our brains negative news and allow negative thoughts to persist, we allow our minds to reach a state of overdrive, while becoming mentally exhausted. This is why we need ‘mental Hygiene’.

Mental hygiene describes daily activities that support and maintain mental health. While we do small tasks daily to maintain our physical and dental hygiene, like showering and brushing our teeth, it is also important that we extend the same care, concern and hygiene to our mental health.

Our mental health describes how we think, feel and behave. It describes how successfully our mind is able to perform the functions of thought, emotion, cognition, perception and behaviour. It affects how we enjoy ourselves, the relationships in our life, our productivity with work and interactions with the general public.

Mental hygiene should be carried out daily for about 10–15 minutes to ensure that our minds and bodies are free of cortisol—the main stress hormone.

We can start slowly and then work our way towards ensuring we do the activities regularly. While carrying out these activities, we must try to make use of all our senses and immerse ourselves completely in the process.

Activities targeted at ensuring mental hygiene include deep breathing, journaling, guided meditation, gratitude exercises, self-compassion, mindfulness, adequate sleep, eating healthy and spending time in nature.

Benefits to our physical and mental well-being when we practice mental hygiene include: enhanced creativity, increased problem solving skills, improved social interactions, good physical health, improved mood and deeper concentration.

Let’s take a stand today as we remind ourselves that our minds matter as we ensure mental hygiene.
Remember, there is no health without mental health.