PhD, Associate Professor B.S. Vasyakin¹
PhD, Associate Professor J.V. Korobanova²
Dr.Sc.Psych., Professor V.P. Andronov³
PhD, Associate Professor J.G. Garanina³
Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow
¹Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Moscow
²N.P. Ogarev Mordovia State University, Saransk

Keywords: mental health, anxiety, psychological adaptation, self-actualization, social well-being.

Background. Mental health is ranked among the key prerequisites for a fully-fledged life, individual physical progress and age-specific, social and cultural functionality on the whole and secondary vital needs for self-development and self-fulfilment in particular.

Objective of the study was to identify, by a theoretical analysis, due socio-psychological adaptation mechanisms for efficient mental health protection.  

Study results and discussion. How the individual mental health components may be defined and what individual may be considered mentally healthy? First, such an individual must demonstrate certain personal qualities including: realistic attitude to life; due understanding of every life situation however difficult or contradictory it may seem; ability to see positive aspects; determination, good control of own behaviour and activity; and a positive emotional background. It is also important that the life of a mentally healthy individual should have a social focus i.e. be driven by the relevant standards and values appreciated by the society. Such an individual is normally fairly self-confident and efficient in social contacts; highly responsible for his/her actions; communicative; reasonably ambitious; and demonstrate reasonable self-respect and emotional balance.

A special emphasis may be made on a few additional qualities including creativity; productivity; life satisfaction; efficient self-fulfilment, good self-management and self-control; realism in the life plans; reasonable optimism; positive emotional background; satisfaction by the life activity; persistent expansion of the scope of individual interests; emotional freedom; tranquillity; discretion; emotional balance; feel of beauty and internal harmony; empathy; imagination; own body feel and control, interpersonal sensitivity; self-perfection; sense of humour; clarity of goals; and openness to new values. These qualities give every chance to an individual to cope with dramatic socio-cultural transformations like the ones currently faced by the Russian society.

Socio-psychological adaptation may be ranked among the most important mental health protection mechanisms [6]. An individual fairly adaptable to the external environmental conditions and impacts in the context of own agenda mostly strives to maintain a reasonable harmony of his/her life goals and missions with the environment to keep due mental balance; create the most favourable conditions for the goals to be attained; and minimise sufferings, problems and difficulties in practical activity on the way to personal success.

When the individual psychological adaptation processes are duly supported by motivations, the healthy individual whose fundamental needs for safety, compassion, love, respect and self-respect are reasonably satisfied may concentrate on the self-development and fulfilment agenda that may be interpreted as the constant mobilisation of potential individual resources, abilities and gifts to pursue the core life mission.

Self-development may be ranked among the most important mechanisms to secure individual mental health. According to V. Frankl, self-development cannot be viewed as the final individual mission albeit it may be considered a direct outcome of the individual efforts to attain the life purpose. Meaning of self-development may be defined in a variety of ways including: individual resource employment process; full-blooded individual creative progress; self-perfection process to secure internal progress; and the outcome of the life purpose attainment process or progress of a creatively mature individual. Individual need for life purpose may differ in a wide range; and the individual life purpose needs to be harmonised with the individual’s identity and social values and context.

Alternatively, a person may take his own individual way with own life perceived and designed as a current task to be solved, and own accomplishments and individual merits versus that of other people being neither overestimated nor taken too serious. This reasonable attitude gives no chance for envy or resentment in relations with other people, nor unhappiness with own fate on the whole. Since most people are still vulnerable to the above negative emotions, such a mindset is quite rare and difficult to attain in fact.

Furthermore, anxiety may be mentioned as a pivotal element to be addressed by the relevant mental health control mechanisms. Anxiety may be interpreted as the feel of inexplicit danger provoking non-motivated, freely growing worry. It should be emphasised that anxiety is always associated with the inability to identify the danger or the time it comes up. Nevertheless, reasonable anxiety is unavoidable and even beneficial as a stimulator for efficient adaptation to reality i.e. an adaptability constituent. An optimal or desirable level of anxiety is very individual and may be referred to as useful anxiety that forms a basis for the individual security being purposefully built up.

One more important element of an individual’s mental health is the individual social wellbeing that may be interpreted as composed of the following elements: (1) internal individual status including health, mood and positive feelings of happiness, optimism etc.; (2) external environment including the situation in the country on the whole, the local cultural context and actual living conditions; and (3) perception of own role and position in the current environment.

Conclusion. Modern global social consciousness cannot be interpreted as the psychological norm any more. As things now stand, some aspects of the modern social and cultural processes should be considered inadequate, with the individual mental health assessments being complicated in this context. The once integral universe of the social and cultural consciousness is getting more and more disintegrated and, hence, the efforts to find some reasonable standard of an individual’s mental health are more and more complicated.

The theoretical analysis showed that it is socio-psychological adaptation, self-development and self-fulfilment, adaptive anxiety and social wellbeing that comprise the key mental health protection socio-psychological mechanisms. The study also considered practical effects of these mechanisms on the individual progress.

References

1. Vasyakin B.S., Pozharskaya E.L., Deberdeeva N.A. Problema stressa i issledovanie stepeni stressoustoychivosti sotrudnikov s ispolzovaniem suschestvuyuschikh metodik [Problem of stress and personnel's degree of stress resistance studied using actual methods]. Uspekhi sovremennoy nauki i obrazovaniya, 2016, vol. 2, no. 3.
2. May R. Problema trevogi [Problem of anxiety]. Trans. from English A.G. Gladkov. Moscow: EKSMO-Press publ., 2001, 432 p. (Series "Psychology of the Twentieth Century")
3. Rean A.A., Kudashev A.R., Baranov A.A. Psikhologiya adaptatsii lichnosti. Analiz. Teoriya. Praktika [Psychology of personal adaptation. Analysis. Theory. Practice]. St. Petersburg: PRIME-EURO-ZNAK publ., 2006, 479 p. (Psychology - the best).
4. Frankl V. Chelovek v poiskakh smysla [Man's search for meaning]. Moscow: Progress publ., 1990, 358 p.
5. Vasyakin B., Berezhnaya M., Pozharskaya E., Deberdeeva N. Adaptation of Graduates and Students of Regions to Education in Higher Education Institutions of Russia by Means of Social-Psychological Training. Available at: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/res/issue/view/1277 Review of European studies, 2015, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 88-98.

Corresponding author: andryushenko-lil@mail.ru

Abstract

Today a high priority is being given to mental health protection and improvement initiatives since these are the key prerequisites for success in the personality development process and socialization with a variety of age-, social-status- and culture-specific individual roles and secondary individual needs and goals including self-development and self-fulfilment ones.

Objective of the study was to identify, by a theoretical analysis, due socio-psychological adaptation mechanisms for efficient mental health protection. We analysed a variety of socialising and mental adaptation mechanisms securing individual’s mental health including social adaptation; self-development and self-fulfilment; adaptive anxiety; social wellbeing etc., and different effects of these mechanisms on an individual.