Bacolod City Health Office Mental Health Care Center psychologist Joeanne Marie Jomalesa recently emphasized the importance of mental health.

“We should treat mental health equal to physical health,” she said. “We can’t fully say we are healthy if we are not mentally healthy.”

“Mental health includes emotional, psychological, and social well-being; that affects how we think, feel, and act,” she added.

Jomalesa recommended some tactics in maintaining positive mental health, including practicing a healthy lifestyle, maintaining positive relationships and avoiding toxic people, taking a break, reaching out, accepting who you are and the things you can barely control, setting realistic goals, and learning to cope positively.

The mental health center, meanwhile, runs an ongoing campaign on mental health awareness, where they host lectures, workshops, along with conducting interviews on subjects such as anxiety, depression, bullying, illegal drug use, stress management, suicide, among others.

The department also offers the Mental Health Gap Program, which enables government health and allied workers to know how to detect mental health problems and discern when and to whom they should refer the client.

The mental health center can be contacted at (034) 446-0474./WDJ