3, 2, 1… Here I am! Well… most of you must be wondering about the origins of the name. The idea of naming the blog Mental Environmental was more or less a word-game… Thereupon, I did some Google research and came across a whole different meaning; quite interesting and new to me. According to Wikipedia the term mental environment is used to describe the sum of all societal influences on mental health. Take the rapid industry development for example and the strong interaction between this environment and human beings. In just a few generations, our environment evolved in an unprecedented way, leaving behind your own physical evolution. In layman’s terms, you are Darwin’s worst enemy! You evolve in a slower pace than the industrial environment’s explosion in the last decades. It is inevitable to observe signs of mental issues through the tons of marketing messages we are subjected to, the consumerism, and the list goes on….

A rather old but enlightening article (the guardian), was indicating the fact that 30 years ago, we were concerned about the effects of the toxic physical environment on public health. The answer? What I like to call the “green” movement. However, nowadays people are struggling with the toxic mental environment as they suffer more and more from stress, anxiety and mood disorders, e.g., emotional roller coasters on Monday mornings! Kalle Lasn, co-founder of “Adbusters: The Journal of the Mental Environment”, an expert on this topic has profoundly stated “What we’re trying to do is pioneer a new form of social activism using all the power of the mass media to sell ideas, rather than products. We’re motivated by a kind of `greenthink’ that comes from the environmental movement and isn’t mired in the old ideology of the left and right. Instead, we take the environmental ethic into the mental ethic, trying to clean up the toxic areas of our minds. You can’t recycle and be a good environmental citizen, then watch four hours of television and get consumption messages pumped at you”. Realistic, or quixotic? It’s up to you…

In a different context, the environment does not expand further than our family, friends and relatives. In that sense, psychologists study mental issues in relation to behavioral patterns we receive and the way we perceive them (examples are broken homes, parental losses etc). I found “How the environment effects in mental health” in The BJPsych (British Journal of Psychiatry) a good read.

Environment is a very strong, meaningful concept; either taken as nature or the wider area we exist, live and interact in our everyday lives. Both sides have a great deal of impact on humanity and should be taken under extreme consideration, should we want to qualitatively improve our life. We have only one in the end of the day! Or not? For answers to that, I should point you somewhere else…

elen