What Is Emotional Health?

The term emotional health can have a variety of definitions, but usually it refers to the level of mental and emotional well-being a person is able to maintain. This can be somewhat synonymous with mental health, meaning that a person is of good emotional health if he or she is generally happy and free of any mental or emotional disorders. Other times, the term is used specifically to describe the ability of a person to correctly express him- or herself through emotions.

A lack of emotional health can lead to a number of problems, from depression and anxiety to anger problems. A person suffering from depression is constantly plagued by negative emotions and often feels as if positive, enjoyable emotions are either too short-lived or out of reach completely. An anger problem could possibly manifest in a person who feels so unable to express his or her emotions, either through fear or through a lack of emotional knowledge, that he or she feels almost cut off from the rest of the world, as if no one understands or cares to understand. Additionally, a person like this might be more inclined to misinterpret the emotions of others, leading to further problems.

Some psychologists view bad emotional health as a result of society's standards that people must keep emotions largely private. Indeed, most people feel uncomfortable at the thought of sharing any deep emotions with anyone other than the closest of friends and family. In response to this, many people suppress their emotions and ignore them, never acknowledging or dealing with things that may be troubling them. Additionally, because emotions are so rarely talked about, most people have an extremely limited vocabulary of emotions when compared to the vast range of feelings that humans can experience, making it very hard for someone attempting to open up to describe what he or she is feeling to another person.

Many psychologists who believe that bad emotional health results from ignoring one's own emotions state that doing so can greatly increase the severity of a situation beyond what is healthy or reasonable. For example, a small worry or negative feeling about a relationship left unacknowledged can eventually develop into a severe anxiety problem or deep resentment toward the other person. Often, the person feeling this way has difficulty pinpointing what caused so much negative feeling in the first place because the original thought was suppressed so thoroughly.