Psychohygiene is a System of Maintaining Mental Health

Mental Hygiene as an Activity for the Sake of Mental Health

Psychohygiene is a system of measures taken by a person and society as a whole to preserve their own mental health and, therefore, health as a whole, which does not exist without this essential property. These means are contained in the very mental health of a person and in society itself and are unconsciously required in everyday life, just as the needs of the body’s homeostasis are not realized until the time when the need for special efforts to preserve the integrity of one’s own mental functioning becomes apparent.

Opinion

The methodology of the culture of life thus covers separate mental phenomena-events, experiments, directions, currents of psychological knowledge that were previously distinguished. Their purpose determines the purpose of the efforts necessary to preserve the full-fledged mental health of a person and society. Efforts require means of preserving harmonious mental states in order not to lose them. This is possible with the awareness of the value of one’s own psychic, which exists, because the unconscious in the self- preservation of every living being is definitely aimed at the protection and maintenance of its life as a whole.

Psychohygiene of Individual Norms of Mental Health

In our opinion, the determination of the individual standard of mental health of each person as an achievable standard of mental hygiene is the most productive, as it helps to identify the diversity of mental capabilities. The subject of the study of the internal picture of mental health is not the external one, functionally expressed in disorders of mental activity, but the internal picture of a naturally organized mental mechanism, its useful product, produced by man, is the culture of mental health or the mental culture of the individual. The psychological content of mental hygiene defines the purpose of all branches of psychological knowledge to create the mental culture of a person, including the culture of his own mental health.

The current state of understanding the theoretical and methodological problems of psychohygiene indicates an irreversible process of restoration of the humanistic orientation of public consciousness, and with it, the turning of psychological research to the problems of pedagogical tact, attentiveness, prudence, respect for human dignity, and care for the mental and physical health of a person. This tradition is a reflection of the extremely tragic history of the development of the Ukrainian ethnic group, compared to other peoples of Europe, and such a comparison, in our opinion, is not only appropriate, but also fair for determining the phylogenetic conditions of the development of the Ukrainian nation during the last millennium. The centuries- old desire to exterminate the entire Ukrainian nation on the lands of its own ethnic origin, and for this a large number of peoples, mostly from the east, west and south, were opposed by military means, both genetically inherited and strengthened by means of family upbringing, with the ability of increased sensitivity, compassion, mercy, and humanity. These particularly pronounced properties were cultivated and continue to be cultivated from generation to generation for the purpose of realizing the abilities to save and protect the health and life of every person under the worst circumstances of the current military genocide of the Ukrainian people by the Russian troops. In this way, the individual mental norm, which preserves life, determines the future of the human population.

Multidisciplinarity of Psychohygienic Knowledge

The return to the development of psychohygiene problems, which began mainly in the field of medicine, now leads to the need for a complex study, first of all, of its psychological, and therefore - pedagogical and social dimensions. In scientific research, the idea of ​ multidisciplinarity is becoming increasingly clear in combining the practical efforts of teachers, doctors and psychologists, and other specialists to create psychohygienic services at the place of residence, work, study, and leisure of people of any age. According to this trend, the fields of psychohygiene of childhood, psychohygiene of the elderly and respectable age, psychohygiene of work based on the specifics of the labor operations performed, where the features of the humanized environment are the key factor, psychohygiene of education, psychohygiene of leisure time, psychohygiene of the family are formed.

The modern period is characterized by the increasing interest of researchers in psychohygienic issues, but the majority of works on this problem belong to medical sciences, which outlines the hitherto little-studied field of social and pedagogical psychohygiene. Separate methodological approaches, techniques, methods of educational influence have already been accumulated by summarizing and systematizing pedagogical experience, conducting psychological and hygienic experiments. The solution to the problems of pedagogical psychohygiene requires integrity and the determination of sufficient and necessary boundaries of the medical, pedagogical, social and psychological spheres of practical solutions to the problems of preserving and strengthening the mental health of all participants in the educational process of educational institutions, but is not limited to the educational sphere. The special conditions of each country are reflected in the implementation of specialized programs on psychohygiene as a system of measures, as a result of which implementation conditions are created to prevent the appearance and development of new mental dysfunctions, disorders and diseases and their coverage of new persons or their categories.

Lifelong Self-Regulation as a Means of Personal Psychohygiene

Among all its important components, human homeostasis is based on rhythms, the volume of which, taking into account their interdependence, is equivalent to infinity. Life-long changeability leads to the emergence of a vital need to master the consequences of these changes, which, in our opinion, should be defined as the ability to self-regulate. By its essence, this ability is psychophysiological self-regulation and a means of personal psychohygiene of each person. The mental self-organization of consciousness, which ensures conscious self-regulation in childhood, adolescence, youth, adulthood, maturity, old age, and respectable age, is carried out by means of cognitive efforts and the mental culture formed by them in the humanized environment in which the process of socially determined individual life takes place. The thinker Taras Shevchenko’s definition of life as education, whose theory is essentially a theory of life, are universal.

This definition is at the same time a methodology of lifelong self-regulation carried out by a person throughout his life within the limits of his individual education. Self- regulation of mental states, which first of all requires their self-awareness, is impossible beyond the limits of the conscious, and therefore beyond this individual education, that is, what is commonly called human education and the education of society as a whole. The unknown cannot be desired, because it is beyond the limits of consciousness, and therefore beyond the capabilities of a person, regardless of his age, if the development of these capabilities is not ensured by lifelong learning, and in the individual dimension, by learning that first includes knowledge of oneself.

Mental Hygiene of Human Resistance

Unfavorable social situations become one of the main causes of excessive internal tension, inability to relax, which has a debilitating effect on the functioning of the body for a long period. Objective fixation of the excess or decrease of the usual mental functioning within the limits of everyday mental states, the performance of intellectual and emotional- volitional actions and the determination of the mental state of rest necessary for rest is effectively carried out by the Dutch psychological devices «NeXus-10», «NeXus Q 32», Ukrainian psychological devices and devices «Khyst», «Pyatra», «Rin», «Duzhin» and others. Psychological equipment objectively confirms or refutes a subjectively declared decrease or deterioration of life functioning, depressed mood and well-being, which is additionally examined by tonometry, pulsometry, oximetry and other measuring tools.

The research conducted by us at the Clinic of Active Therapy of the Original States (ATOS)1 in Kyiv proved the limitlessness of possible psychophysiological changes associated with adverse life situations, the prevention of which is directly related to the development of individual self-regulation of mental states, which in its genesis is provided by mental organization consciousness caused by education acquired during previous age periods of personal development.

It has been established that one of the main reasons for the destruction of lifelong health are acquired in childhood family and/or school, street complications of relationships with peers, high school students, other reference persons, educational overload, monotony or, on the contrary, disordered life and the demands of reference others, distress , inconsistency of living conditions with

1 Clinic of Active Therapy of the Original States(ATOS): https:// atos.kiev.ua/bolezni-i-sostoyaniya/?fbclid=IwAR176qd0MIAsRTcWKv3Jg8 KpZGtXtBjTZLRiiTIQrBle5XnfX-nlRSq9-Co psychophysiological features and needs of the person. In a modern school, regardless of how highly external subjects of influence evaluate it, children with an inert nervous system, especially sensitive to any injustice, children with increased moral responsibility, individual endowments of abilities that cannot be realized in a totalitarian society feel uncomfortable. the system of school competencies and the picture of the world narrowed by program requirements. The methods of learning the world by modern children are mainly narrowed down to the development of two main telereceptors - the organs of hearing and sight. The hyperexploitation of these two organs distorts the child’s perception of the world and the perception of the world by current and future adults, creating the basis for future disharmonies of unreplaced natural needs that will require medical rescue.

The individual thinking of a person during his life takes place in a much greater variety of manifestations than is prepared for this by the education system programmed on the basis of the self-sufficient needs of its organizers and creators: the ideas they know about the world, the amount of money and hours of their own self-efficacy in standardized forms of psychogenic tests. All these are factors of chronic tension, which, in combination with genetic, prenatal, natal and postnatal harms, and other adverse influences create a pathological environment of inverted self-realization of a person in later life, dangerous for their health and social coexistence. That is why it is important to create, develop and implement methods of harmonizing relationships, improving well-being, raising one’s own self-esteem and the level of lifelong harassment as a psychohygienic means of increasing the resistance of each person.

Conclusion

Mental hygiene involves the implementation of a system of measures to preserve one’s own mental health and health in general. A person’s mental health and society as a whole determine the need for special efforts to preserve the integrity of one’s own mental functioning. The psychological content of mental hygiene determines the purpose of all branches of psychological knowledge to create the mental culture of a person, including the culture of his own mental health, which is characterized by its own individual norm - a model of optimal self-realization. The individual norm of mental functioning preserves the current vital self-fulfillment of a person and thereby determines the future of the human population.

The idea of ​multidisciplinarity of mental hygiene is embodied in the formation of the branches of childhood psychohygiene, psychohygiene of old and respectable age, occupational psychohygiene according to the specifics of the labor operations performed, psychohygiene of education, psychohygiene of leisure time, psychohygiene of the family. Life-long variability leads to the emergence of a vital need to master the consequences of these changes, which determines the ability to self-regulate. This ability is a means of personal psychohygiene of each person.

Psychological equipment objectively confirms or refutes the subjectively declared decrease or deterioration of life functioning, depressed mood and well-being. In this way, instrumental and psychological measurements contribute to the development of individual self-regulation of mental states and are an important means of individual psychohygiene of a person. Methods of harmonizing relationships, improving well-being, raising one’s own self-esteem and the level of lifelong harassment are psychohygienic means of increasing the resistance of each person.