Welcome to the Very Well Mind podcast. We've interviewed over 100 authors, experts, entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, and others to help you learn strategies to care for your mental health.

This episode is hosted by psychotherapist and bestselling author Amy Morin. Now let's get into the episode.

Okay. You're listening to the Friday fix.

Today I'm talking about the simple things that you can do to improve your mental health.

We conducted some research at Very Well Mind a few months ago and discovered that most people say they value taking care of their mental health just as much as they value caring for their physical health.

Yet those same people said that they tend to put a lot more time and energy into caring for their physical health than they do their mental health.

I think this might be partly because most of us don't really know how to care for our mental health.

It's not something that we've talked about much as a society, at least not until lately.

Growing up, most of us had physical education classes where we learned about how to care for our physical health.

In our health class in school, focused mostly on physical health issues.

We didn't learn about things like depression or strategies for managing our anger.

Since the pandemic, though, a lot of people, including athletes and celebrities,

have stepped forward to talk about their mental health and the resources available.

For the first time,

a lot of people realized what their go-to coping strategies had been. Things that you might have taken for granted, like having coffee with a friend or being able to go to the gym, might have been

key components to helping you stay mentally healthy. Without being able to do those things,

you might have noticed your

mental health worsened. Pandemic aside, however, many people wonder how to best care for their

mental health. In the past, we reserve therapy for times when people were already struggling

with their mental health. Insurance companies only paid for treatment when someone had a

diagnosable mental illness.

Fortunately, times are starting to change, and we're realizing that seeing a mental health professional can help prevent a lot of mental health problems before they start.

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