Your role as a practitioner is to acknowledge your client's mental health concerns and use this knowledge to incorporate strategies that will support your client throughout their exercise intervention. If your client is not mentally healthy, they likely won’t be able to attend to their physical health and adhere to the intervention prescribed.

It will be important that you are aware of any mental health concerns and can refer your client to services to help with their holistic care.

The WHO defines mental health as:

- a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.

-It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape the world we live in.

-Mental health is a basic human right. And it is crucial to personal, community and socio-economic development.

-Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It is a complex continuum, which is experienced differently from one person to the next, with varying degrees of difficulty and distress and potentially very different social and clinical outcomes.

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https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response

WHO goes onto suggest:

Throughout our lives, multiple individual, social and structural determinants may combine to protect or undermine our mental health and shift our position on the mental health continuum.

All of these contribute to mental health problems and increase people’s risk of experiencing mental health conditions:

-Individual psychological and biological factors: eg: genetic predisposition

-Lack of emotional skills to manage situations

-Exposure to unfavorable social and economic circumstances: inequality, poverty, incarceration, education access

-Geopolitical circumstances: violence, war, involuntary resettlement

-Environmental circumstances: water, air pollution, sanitation

-Substance use

Continue to read what the World Health Organization thinks about the Risks and Protective factors that contribute to our mental health.

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-strengthening-our-response

Watch this video to learn more about the clients who may present with mental health concerns or histories:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y97VF5UJcc

Signs and Symptoms

There are too many mental health disorders or issues to be able to cover in this short module, but there are some common signs that we should be aware of for mental health issues. Here is a short video that covers some of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB49AezFJxs

Health practitioners may not be focused on mental health, but by being empathetic/compassionate practitioner you will likely find clients will share information about their mental health and you may be the first person they have shared this with. Always be compassionate and find ways to support them in accessing services in their area.