Introduction
In today’s fast-paced academic environment, the key to reaching one’s full potential and achieving success at school begins with prioritizing mental health and acknowledging its importance. Mental health is the emotional and psychological well-being of oneself and influences one's cognitive, perceptive, and behavioral abilities. Keeping your mental health at a decent state is crucial for learning, and here is why.
The Process of Learning
First of all, mental health significantly influences the process of learning because it heavily shapes one’s habits, attitude, and overall mindset when engaged in cognitive tasks such as schoolwork and studies. When your mental health is at a negative state, it can result in one feeling drained and burnt out leading to a sort of mental fatigue and can make you feel incredibly unenergetic. If this happens for an extended amount of time, it can impact someone’s life until measures are taken to help.
Clouded Mindset
A similar reason for why it's important to maintain good mental health is to avoid mental clouding. When one experiences poor mental health, whether it is depression or any other related conditions, it often leads to mental ‘clouding’, creating a sort of barrier to anything unrelated to any stress you are experiencing. It's worth noting that stress can cause symptoms of depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders to severely worsen. Similar to the influence of the process of learning, these conditions can result in increased fatigue, diminish your motivation, and cause the host to be distracted and detached to anything around them. Mental clouding and the overall fatigue caused by it can cause you to not be able to focus or retain information and can have an impact on learning and make good performance at school very difficult.
Interview with SEL Counselor, Ms. Yepiz
It is incredibly important to have good mental health, and staff here at Mayfair agree! I asked Ms. Yepiz, a SEL Counselor a few questions about the matter and these are her answers. “Maintaining good mental health is crucial for students, as it is equally significant as physical well being,” she says. Because it is so important, keeping a good mental health helps us maintain a positive relationship with the people we’re around, a positive impact on school, and most importantly a good relationship with yourself and your emotions. She comments that, “One of the impacts for having good mental health is being able to connect with peers and teachers on campus. Students who are struggling with their mental health may have trouble connecting with others.” With a bad relationship between your emotions and an overall clouded mindset, the impact at school gets more noticeable. Ms. Yepiz adds, “If a student is struggling with their mental health, oftentimes grades take a toll. When we are struggling with mental health we can lack motivation to go to class, to do work or we can't focus on what is being taught. If a student is struggling with mental health we want them to encourage them to reach out to counselors.” Having good mental health isn’t the only factor that contributes to success on campus, but it plays a huge role in regular living. Ultimately, prioritizing your well-being and good mental health is instrumental to success at school and is crucial for academic development of any and all students.
Cover photo from Saul Albert: https://www.flickr.com/photos/saulalbert/34991210106
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