Investment in psychological resilience is essential for strong 'psychological immunity'!
President of Üsküdar University, Psychiatrist Prof. Nevzat Tarhan was the live broadcast guest of TRT Voice of Türkiye Radio. Tarhan made remarkable evaluations on "How can we protect our mental health?". Emphasizing that a stress-free life is not possible, Tarhan underlined that stress should be managed correctly. Tarhan said that the psychological immune system can be strengthened by investing in psychological resilience.
"The ideal medicine is to focus on protection and prevention"
Drawing attention to the importance of protective and preventive treatments, Psychiatrist Prof. Nevzat Tarhan; "There are four main areas of work for mental health workers. One is therapeutic medicine, a clinic that treats depression, bipolar, schizophrenia. This is a difficult and costly work for both the state and physicians. The ideal medicine here is to focus on protection and prevention. When a person has some precursor symptoms, it is necessary to determine the risk groups with early diagnosis and take precautions so that they do not get sick. Protection, primary protection. Prevention, secondary protection. In primary prevention, we are working on what can be done to prevent healthy people from getting sick. And then there is tertiary protection. There, after the person has had the disease, it is looked at what should be done to prevent it from recurring. All three have to go together. Among these, the one that is worth its weight in gold is the lifestyle, learning the right lifestyle. In recent studies, it has been revealed that 60-70 percent of diseases are related to lifestyle errors. In other words, from obesity to gastrointestinal diseases, heart diseases, as well as mental health disorders, it is observed that all of them are related to lifestyle, eating habits, sitting, getting up, traveling, entertainment habits, as well as the skills of whether or not to communicate with people in a healthy way, whether to solve problems or not, to manage stress or not. Scientific studies show that 60-70 percent of diseases are preventable. On top of that, more attention is paid to preventive mental health studies."
“A stress-free life is not possible"
Stating that people should know themselves while moving towards the goal, Tarhan said that "It is very important to know oneself, to be able to distinguish between strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities on the way to the goal. When you can do this, you can say 'no' to thoughts and risks related to the disease. A person is able to say 'no' to addiction. People are being taught a variety of safe behavior skills. People are working on anger control, emotion regulation control, self-observation, self-knowledge, then self-management, and then self-consciousness. These people are becoming resistant to the disease. In other words, it is a kind of strengthening of the psychological immune system. This is called psychological resilience. In other words, it is translated as psychological resilience. In fact, this means gaining psychological flexibility. You yawn in the face of stress, learn something and get back to your old self. You have experienced trauma that builds on strengthening. You turn your life events and stresses into opportunities instead of threats. Because a stress-free life is not possible. I wish I could, but life means hitting the road, stress, working, going to school. We will not be afraid of stress that can be controlled."
"Psychological resilience needs to be invested"
Explaining the ways of managing against the stresses encountered in life, Tarhan stated that "In every life event, there is a way in which stress is managed. Life events, what we call stress, come like a flood. In this situation, panicked people are beating up, 'Where did this flood come from?' Or some of them say, ‘it is all downhill from here’ and let themselves go with the flow. What does a smart person do? If they find log, they get on the log and use it to go to their own destination. They use the energy from the flood to go to their own goal. It is the same with life events. This needs to be learned, and it needs to be invested in psychological resilience. We can also call it strengthening our psychological immune system. The equivalent of this in general medicine is to strengthen the immune system. In other words, they are called non-invasive treatments. In other words, before surgery, a person first strengthens one’s immune system and focuses on 'Can one beat this disease?' The immune system is strengthened. If it does not improve, then surgeries and heavy treatments will occur. The same is true for mental illness, and the same is true for mental illness. The ideal is to try to make sure that people do not get sick. In fact, it is very simple, for example, if a person knows the hygiene rules to prevent physical health, if one knows how to clean, brush their teeth, take care of themselves, many diseases will slightly affect, but if they do not know, the microbe enters, progresses, and it is too late. Psychological hygiene, in a way, we teach people this. This is not very difficult."
Üsküdar News Agency (ÜNA)