The goal of a comprehensive solution to depression should not only be to give the person the medication and psychotherapy they need, but also to support them in self-help solutions that can minimize the frequency and intensity of depressive attacks. Self-help, which can be integrated into everyday life, should be conscious care for mental health - psychohygiene. Not only the elimination of "addictive" substances, but also the addition of positive factors and those components of psychohygiene that can improve the quality of life of a person suffering from depression. For example, physical activity is part of the lifestyle of depressed people only occasionally for up to half of the respondents. However, since movement is a positive factor for maintaining physical and mental health, it is justified to support clients with depression to find a sports activity that they would perform with more frequent frequency.
Sleep quality is also a common problem for people with depression. This too can be influenced in a healthier and more natural way than pharmacotherapy. For example, the aforementioned sufficient physical activity. It follows from the answers of the respondents that people suffering from a depressive illness in most cases prefer the help of a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, which is largely a passive solution to their depressive conditions. Therefore, we focused on finding out the knowledge of the concept of psychohygiene and its use in the life of the respondents. 56% of respondents with depression are familiar with the subject of psychohygiene. Of these respondents, however, only half of the respondents use it occasionally, and up to 29% of those who know what psychohygiene means, do not apply it in their lives at all. Therefore, in the future, we see room for professions working with depressed clients in the area of supporting client management for the use of psychohygienic elements.
Overall, based on the results, it is possible to conclude that people with depression have impaired maintenance of mental health, mainly in the area of sleep and physical activity, while smoking, alcohol use and coffee drinking are almost comparable to the results from the group of respondents without depression. Disruption in the field of lifestyle can be both a concomitant phenomenon of depression and its contributing factors to the underlying cause of a certain disease with depressive symptomatology.
Illnesses with depressive symptoms have an increasing tendency. This is the reason to focus on the issue of caring for people with depression not only from a medical and psychological point of view.
The plans of the National Mental Health Program also include prevention in the sense of educational activities, care for people with mental disorders in order to minimize the number of repeated hospitalizations, create and implement crisis intervention for people with mental disorders.
On the basis of observation, during our studies in the field of social work, we found that active care for the mental health of a person suffering from a depressive illness, either on an endogenous basis or due to the impact of a stressful situation that may have been caused by a social event, is a beneficial solution for these people.
Psychohygiene is a set of preventive measures to maintain mental health, it affects several areas of a person's life, as a person's health is not only an optimal state in the area of the physical side, but also in the dimension of the psyche and social experience. These dimensions influence each other. Therefore, a person must be perceived comprehensively, and social work, precisely because of its interdisciplinary nature, should not be an exception.
For many people, psychohygiene is a natural part of life, but for people who have a disturbed balance in their lives in any area of health - physical, mental or social, the elements of psychohygiene are absent or significantly weakened. Therefore, in social work, especially in social counseling, there is room for the use of psychohygiene means to implement the rehabilitation of the consequences, but also the causes of social problems.
Mental hygiene is intended for the healthy and the sick. In healthy people, it should help maintain and strengthen mental health. In patients, adherence to the principles of mental hygiene encourages the strengthening of the possibility of returning to the lost mental balance.
The concept of salutogenesis is related to maintaining good and high-quality (physical and mental) health. The concept explains the sources, origin and development of health - in contrast to etiopathogenesis, which deals with the causes and development of diseases. Salutogenesis comprehensively complements the understanding of health and disease and focuses on those aspects that make it possible to explain why a person can remain healthy despite obstacles and difficulties in life. It examines health conditions and formulates them quite generally: in the sense of active action, in the ability to cope with the demands of everyday life and in the sense of active identity formation, or self-development. Salutogenesis relies on stress management theories and sources of resistance. (Rüdiger-Felix, 2006)
Mental resistance in the sense of resilience represents the ability of an individual to cope effectively with stress and its consequences. Maintaining and developing resilience through protective factors may be the way out of stress-induced depression. (Selko, 2009)
Resilience plays an important role in how a person under the influence of stress and difficult life events can deal with them and what impact this will have on his future life. The reality of strengthening resistance to stress with psychohygiene is as follows: psychohygiene elements are not used by 29% of depressed people and 24% of probands from the second group of healthy individuals. In the survey, we also asked a question aimed at the possible use of psychohygiene as a matter that can help people cope with emotional problems. To this question, 14% of the respondents answered that psychohygiene can help them, 41% are inclined to the fact that psychohygiene can partially help them, 13% chose the answer no and 27% of respondents did not consider this option. Based on the fact that 40% of people did not know or did not think about the possible benefit of using psychohygiene for their life and coping with a difficult situation, we see possibilities in spreading information about psychohygiene, its application and contribution to improving the quality of life.
In the end, we want to touch on the finding of the fact that focused on the duration of the depressive illness in respondents with this diagnosis. On average, the surveyed respondents have been receiving treatment for almost 7 years. The longest treated was the respondent with 18 years of treatment. These numbers are an indicator of the fact that mental illnesses, including depressive ones, are chronic diseases and therefore costly in terms of their treatment. Therefore, even from this point of view, there is a reason to look for and test the possibilities of improving the condition, survival and application of these people in society, even with the participatory cooperation of a social worker.
Depression is a widespread mental illness affecting all areas of a person's life, therefore clients with this illness need comprehensive interdisciplinary help. Its occurrence in the near future will not have a downward trend, rather the opposite.
In our work, we looked at the possibility of using psychohygiene - a set of activities to support mental health - as a source of improving the health and daily life of both healthy and sick people. We perceive psychohygiene as a type of activities that can be offered as a possible and effective guide to self-help solutions, especially in health, but also social or otherwise difficult situations of a person, as psychohygiene also deals with the relationship to oneself and to other people.
Author: Mgr. Tatiana Braun
The paper was presented at the 5th annual conference entitled ,,Psychology of health 2010", which took place on May 19, 2010 in Bratislava. The conference was organized by the health psychology section of the SPS at SAV in cooperation with the health section of the Ministry of Health of the Slovak Republic. The following participated in the preparation of the event: National Institute of Heart and Vascular Diseases in Bratislava, VŠZaSP St. Elizabeth in Bratislava, WHO Office in Slovakia, KISH Košice, Department of Psychology FF KU in Ružomberok and Department of Psychology FF TU in Trnava.
Proceedings from the 5th conference of health psychology, Bratislava, 2010 was published only in electronic form Availability: http://www.prohuman.sk/psychologia/zbornik-prispevkov-z-konferencie-psychologia-zdravia-2010