The issue of mental health is a hot issue being discussed at this time. The reason is that someone mentally healthy can use his abilities or potential to the fullest in facing life’s challenges. So that mental health will significantly affect a person’s performance in everything done or done. The issue of mental health is a topic discussed in the Talkshow of the Family Women’s Association (IWK) of the Faculty of Administrative Sciences, University of Indonesia (FIA UI), namely with the topic It’s Okay Not To Be Okay: The Importance of Maintaining Mental Health.
“The reasons we need to be sensitive to mental health issues include improving the quality of life; increasing productivity; maintaining healthy relationships; preventing more serious mental health problems such as anxiety and bipolar depression; and maintaining physical health. Therefore, we need to be open to this issue so that in our family, work and other environments, we can be happy and have maximum performance,” said Lyviana Chandra, SE., MM., Chairman of IWK FIA UI.
Shabrina Audinia, the resource person on the talk show, said that stress is a condition that threatens mental health. Stress is the body’s reaction to threats or pressure, and physical and emotional tension can make us uncomfortable. However, stress is something that every human being cannot avoid.
“Stress is Normal! Stress is a natural and healthy reaction from humans that we experience from time to time. Stress can help us learn new things, meet deadlines, help us finish a job quickly, and motivate ourselves because of the hormone epinephrine. Two types of stress, namely Eustress Stress, make people more enthusiastic and productive in dealing with situations and make individuals grow. The second is distress that cannot be controlled and is prolonged, overwhelming, and harms individuals,” said Shabrina.
Furthermore, Shabrina stated that stress comes from two external sources, including the physical environment; organization, such as work rules, workload, deadlines, demands to adapt to the new normal; significant events in life, and daily bustle. Meanwhile, internal sources, such as self-talk, lifestyle choices, destructive/irrational thoughts, and personality, come from within a person.
“Our mind has three stages in dealing with stress, namely the alarm stage where the mind labels the source of stress as a “threat”, activates the “stress” hormones adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol. Then, the second is the resistance stage, namely the stage of adaptation to stress. Cortisol is maintained to fight stress; and finally is the exhaustion stage, where the body’s energy runs out, the immune system decreases, the body is no longer strong enough to deal with stress and will trigger a burnout condition, namely prolonged stress conditions make us feel emotionally, physically and psychologically exhausted,” said Shabrina.
To manage stress, we need to understand that the fact is, there are things in life that we cannot control. So we need to focus on things that we can maintain. We can also do coping with stress, namely, efforts made by individuals to deal with stress that can be done in various ways, namely emotion-focused coping, focusing on problems that cause stress; issue-focused coping, namely the focus on regulating emotions that arise from stressful experiences; emotion-focused coping, namely seeking social support, giving meaning to stressful experiences, providing distance and self-regulation; and problem-focused coping namely by making plans – Setting goals – Behaving assertively – Expressing opinions objectively.
“We can also do simple techniques to help manage stress called self-help, one of which is managing our breath; grounding; physical activity; And
Journaling. If you have difficulty managing stress alone, don’t hesitate to ask for professional help, which is natural,” said Shabrina closing her presentation session.
In the talk show session, the staff, IWK, and lecturers gave their respective views on mental health. This activity occurred on Friday, 17 February 2023, at the 2020 Edition Auditorium of the FIA UI M Building.
