By Manfred Kets de Vries
There’s something slightly ironic about trying to write neatly about mental health, a subject that is anything but neat. It often begins with a list of admirable traits — resilience, self-awareness, emotional balance, hope — and quickly runs into the reality that mental health is not a polished or perfect state. It includes moments of self-doubt, emotional overreaction, small regrets, and the quiet wondering of whether you’re coping as well as you seem. Mental health isn’t about always having it together — it’s about finding ways to keep going, even when the going is quite hard.
And yet, for all its contradictions, mental health is real. It matters. It shapes how we live, how we love, and how we recover from the inevitable challenges and disappointments of being human. So if we are to define it — or at least approach an understanding — we must do so with both seriousness and humility. Because to be mentally healthy is to hold space for both the difficult and the hopeful, the sorrowful and the absurd, and to remain steady in the midst of all that complexity.
At its foundation, mental health depends on a stable sense of identity — not a fixed or rigid idea of who we are, but an underlying continuity that we can return to, even when life feels chaotic. For many of us, identity is not necessary a finished product. We grow, we shift, we change our minds. But stability means having enough of a through-line to recognise ourselves across all those changes. It’s the ability to say, “This is still me,” even when the details — our roles, our relationships, our beliefs — have evolved. Mentally healthy people still experience doubt and confusion. They still have moments when they feel lost. But they don’t fall apart in those moments. There’s something steady, even if quiet, that holds them together. They may question what’s happening to them, but they carry within them a sense of self that doesn’t disappear when faced with uncertainty and doesn’t rely entirely on external approval to feel real.
And because we are not born in isolation, mental health also hinges on the ability to form and sustain relationships. Which isn’t easy. It can be hard to be close to people. Human beings can be inconvenient, unpredictable, full of opinions and contradictory emotions. Still, nobody is an island. Homo sapiens is a social animal. A mentally healthy person knows how to be open to others without being consumed by them. They can navigate the highs and lows of love and friendship, tolerate intimacy, make amends when necessary, and, crucially, accept that no relationship is free of friction. They know that being close sometimes means being wounded, and that the alternative — numb detachment — is far worse.
Much of our inner peace depends on how we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed — psychologically, that is. Everyone uses defence mechanisms. However, there’s a world of difference between defences that help us grow and those that quietly unravel us over time. Some primitive defences, like splitting, denial or projection, may numb discomfort in the short term but often leave us stranded from ourselves. Others feel sharp and clever but tend to isolate more than they soothe. In contrast, mature defences like humour, sublimation, creativity or altruism allow us to stay engaged with life without being consumed by it. These types of defences redirect our anxiety into art or planning, our sadness into insight, our frustration into meaningful action. The mentally healthy use their defences not to hide from reality, but to stay present with it — just softened around the edges.
Equally vital is the ability to feel the full range of emotions. Too often we associate mental health with calmness, serenity, some kind of enlightened neutrality. But the truth is, emotional richness is something positive. Anger, sorrow, jealousy, joy, longing, disgust — all of these have their place. What matters is not eliminating “negative” feelings but learning to name them, express them, and let them pass without hijacking our lives. To feel deeply and not be destroyed by feelings — that’s the goal. A healthy person can cry when crying is called for and laugh loudly when something’s funny.
All this emotional bandwidth would be unbearable without a degree of impulse control — another underrated but vital quality. It is the quiet cornerstone of a functioning life. The ability to sit with discomfort without doing something immediately dramatic — to not text your irritation to an ex-lover, to not rage and quit your job, to not punch a wall — is what allows us to live among others. Mental health doesn’t mean not having wild thoughts. It means having them and not acting on them in ways that damage your life or someone else’s. It’s being able to say, “I feel this… and I will wait.”
Now let’s pause at an often-overlooked frontier of personal well-being: sexual health. Not performance, not perfection, but the ability to engage with one’s sexuality in a way that feels safe, integrated, and human. Mentally healthy people are not immune to awkwardness, insecurity, or mismatched sexual desires — but they are able to talk about it, explore it, set boundaries, and ask for what they need. They experience sex not only as release or validation but also as connection, play, communication. It’s not always candlelit and transcendent. Sometimes it’s clumsy. Sometimes it’s not wanted at all. But it’s not a battlefield of shame and guilt.
The mentally well are also able to tolerate ambivalence — that strange, uneasy feeling of having two contradictory truths living in your chest at the same time. They can love someone and be disappointed in them. They can feel afraid and excited. They can want to leave and still choose to stay. Mental health is, in large part, about developing the capacity to sit inside murky waters without thrashing around in panic. Ambivalence is not a flaw in cognition. It’s evidence that you accept contradictions.
Loss, of course, is unavoidable. To be alive is to lose — lovers, dreams, moments. A person’s mental health is not measured by whether or not they grieve. All of us have this experience. It’s measured by their ability to grieve without giving up. Depression visits all of us, some more frequently than others. What marks the mentally healthy is not immunity, but resilience. They can feel the dead weight of sorrow and still manage their lives. Also, they are able to ask for help when it’s needed. They keep participating in life even when life doesn’t feel worth the effort.
A good sense of reality is one of the quieter, often overlooked markers of mental health — but it is essential. It involves the ability to distinguish between what we feel and what is fact, between fears and actual threats, between our internal narrative and the world as it really is. Mentally healthy people aren’t immune to distortion — they, too, have moments of catastrophising or wishful thinking. But they’re able to notice when their mind is drifting into fantasy or panic and gently bring themselves back to what can be observed, checked, and trusted. They can hold their emotional responses with care, while also stepping back and asking, “Is this the full picture?” This grounding in reality makes them more open, more flexible, and more capable of living in the world as it is, not just as they fear or wish it to be.
And then there’s playfulness — perhaps one of the most underrated signs of mental wellness. It’s easy to mistake it for immaturity, but in reality, playfulness signals emotional flexibility and a deep kind of resilience. It’s the ability to find lightness in heavy moments, to respond to life’s absurdities not with despair, but with creativity and humour. Mentally healthy people retain the capacity to laugh at themselves. This is not avoidance, but a way of staying engaged — a kind of joyful defiance in the face of pressure or pain. Play is not reserved for easy times; it’s how we stay human during hard ones.
Underlying all aspects of mental health is the capacity for self-reflection — not obsessive rumination, but honest, thoughtful observation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. This kind of reflection is not about self-criticism or harsh judgment; it’s about having the courage to ask, “What am I doing? Why am I doing it? Is this helping me or hurting me?” and to do so with enough compassion to actually grow from the answers. Mentally healthy people are not immune to mistakes or blind spots, but they are willing to own them. They can recognise patterns, admit when they’re wrong, and notice when they’re slipping into old habits without collapsing into self-blame. Self-reflection, at its best, is a quiet act of care — a way of staying connected to ourselves while making space to change. It allows us to evolve without disowning who we’ve been, and to move forward with a bit more clarity and kindness each time.
And finally, to be mentally healthy is to carry within oneself a quiet, steady thread of hope. Not the loud kind of optimism that insists everything will be fine, nor the forced cheerfulness that denies pain — but a grounded belief that things can improve, even if they aren’t okay right now. It’s the conviction that we can endure difficulty, that change is possible, and that our efforts — however small — matter. Mentally healthy people don’t always feel hopeful, but they return to it like a touchstone. They have the ability to reframe things positively. Also, they find meaning in everyday gestures, purpose in effort, and even in failure, the beginnings of growth. They understand that pain is not a detour from life, but part of the path — and that hope is not about ignoring hardship but about moving through it with the belief that something meaningful can still emerge. They believe that they have agency.
In the end, mental health is not a destination or a fixed achievement. It isn’t a line we cross that guarantees ease or clarity from then on. Rather, it’s a way of being — a daily practice shaped by patience, reflection, and the ongoing effort to live meaningfully within the shifting realities of our lives. It’s about staying present with ourselves, even when we feel uncertain or overwhelmed. It’s about showing up — not perfectly, but consistently — with as much honesty and kindness as we can manage.
Also, mental health doesn’t require that we have all the answers. It asks only that we remain engaged — with others, with our own thoughts and feelings, and with the broader, often difficult, experience of being human. It invites a kind of strength that isn’t about force or certainty, but about flexibility and resilience. It allows for moments of grief, confusion, even absurdity — and still makes room for joy, connection, and quiet confidence.
In fact, to be mentally healthy is to accept contradictions: to feel both hopeful and tired, both steady and unsure. It’s the capacity to be flawed and still worthy, lost and still committed to finding our way. To reframe things positively when times are tough. Also, it pertains to the ability to own our own life.
Perhaps the most encouraging part of all this is that many of us are doing just that — imperfectly, quietly, and often without realising it. We continue to care, to reflect, to love, to grow. And in that persistence, there is something deeply human — and deeply healthy — about simply continuing on.