Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder where people have trouble sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep for as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy, irritability, and a depressed mood. It may result in an increased risk of accidents of all kinds as well as problems focusing and learning. Insomnia can be short term, lasting for days or weeks, or long term, lasting more than a month. The concept of the word insomnia has two possibilities: insomnia disorder (ID) and insomnia symptoms, and many abstracts of randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews often underreport on which of these two possibilities the word insomnia refers to.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that develops from experiencing a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a person's life or well-being. Symptoms may include disturbing thoughts, feelings, or dreams related to the events, mental or physical distress to trauma-related cues, attempts to avoid trauma-related cues, alterations in the way a person thinks and feels, and an increase in the fight-or-flight response. These symptoms last for more than a month after the event. Young children are less likely to show distress, but instead may express their memories through play. A person with PTSD is at a higher risk of suicide and intentional self-harm.
Exercise is physical activity that enhances or maintains fitness and overall health. It is performed for various reasons, including weight loss or maintenance, to aid growth and improve strength, develop muscles and the cardiovascular system, hone athletic skills, improve health, or simply for enjoyment. Many individuals choose to exercise outdoors where they can congregate in groups, socialize, and improve well-being as well as mental health.
Hormesis is a two-phased dose-response relationship to an environmental agent whereby low-dose amounts have a beneficial effect and high-dose amounts are either inhibitory to function or toxic. Within the hormetic zone, the biological response to low-dose amounts of some stressors is generally favorable. An example is the breathing of oxygen, which is required in low amounts via respiration in living animals, but can be toxic in high amounts, even in a managed clinical setting.
Craniosacral therapy (CST) or cranial osteopathy is a form of alternative medicine that uses gentle touch to feel non-existent rhythmic movements of the skull's bones and supposedly adjust the immovable joints of the skull to achieve a therapeutic result. CST is a pseudoscience and its practice has been characterized as quackery. It is based on fundamental misconceptions about the anatomy and physiology of the human skull and is promoted as a cure-all for a variety of health conditions.
Mind–body interventions (MBI) or mind-body training (MBT) are health and fitness interventions that are intended to work on a physical and mental level such as yoga, tai chi, and Pilates.
Psychological trauma is an emotional response caused by severe distressing events that are outside the normal range of human experiences. It must be understood by the affected person as directly threatening the affected person or their loved ones with death, severe bodily injury, or sexual violence; indirect exposure, such as from watching television news, may be extremely distressing and can produce an involuntary and possibly overwhelming physiological stress response, but does not produce trauma per se. Examples include violence, rape, or a terrorist attack.
A relaxation technique is any method, process, procedure, or activity that helps a person to relax; attain a state of increased calmness; or otherwise reduce levels of pain, anxiety, stress or anger. Relaxation techniques are often employed as one element of a wider stress management program and can decrease muscle tension, lower blood pressure, and slow heart and breath rates, among other health benefits.
Balneotherapy is a method of treating diseases by bathing, a traditional medicine technique usually practiced at spas. Since ancient times, humans have used hot springs, public baths and thermal medicine for therapeutic effects. While it is considered distinct from hydrotherapy, there are some overlaps in practice and in underlying principles. Balneotherapy may involve hot or cold water, massage through moving water, relaxation, or stimulation. Many mineral waters at spas are rich in particular minerals such as silica, sulfur, selenium, and radium. Medicinal clays are also widely used, a practice known as 'fangotherapy'.
Animal-assisted therapy (AAT) is an alternative or complementary type of therapy that includes the use of animals in a treatment. The goal of this animal-assisted intervention is to improve a patient's social, emotional, or cognitive functioning. Studies have documented some positive effects of the therapy on subjective self-rating scales and on objective physiological measures such as blood pressure and hormone levels.
The psychological and physiological effects of meditation have been studied. In recent years, studies of meditation have increasingly involved the use of modern instruments, such as fMRI and EEG, which are able to observe brain physiology and neural activity in living subjects, either during the act of meditation itself or before and after meditation. Correlations can thus be established between meditative practices and brain structure or function.
Green exercise refers to physical exercise undertaken in natural environments. Physical exercise is well known to provide physical and psychological health benefits. There is also good evidence that viewing, being in, and interacting with natural environments has positive effects, reducing stress and increasing the ability to cope with stress, reducing mental fatigue and improving concentration and cognitive function. The concept of Green exercise has therefore grown out of well-established areas such as the attention restoration theory within environmental psychology which have tended to focus on the psychological and physical effects of viewing nature and well-recognised work about the psychological benefits of physical exercise.
In psychology, relaxation is the emotional state of low tension, in which there is an absence of arousal, particularly from negative sources such as anger, anxiety, or fear.
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week evidence-based program that offers secular, intensive mindfulness training to assist people with stress, anxiety, depression and pain. Developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the 1970s by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga and exploration of patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling and action. Mindfulness can be understood as the non-judgmental acceptance and investigation of present experience, including body sensations, internal mental states, thoughts, emotions, impulses and memories, in order to reduce suffering or distress and to increase well-being. Mindfulness meditation is a method by which attention skills are cultivated, emotional regulation is developed, and rumination and worry are significantly reduced. During the past decades, mindfulness meditation has been the subject of more controlled clinical research, which suggests its potential beneficial effects for mental health, athletic performance, as well as physical health. While MBSR has its roots in wisdom teachings of Zen Buddhism, Hatha Yoga, Vipassana and Advaita Vedanta, the program itself is secular. The MBSR program is described in detail in Kabat-Zinn's 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living.
The effects of climate change on mental health and wellbeing are documented. This is especially the case for vulnerable populations and those with pre-existing serious mental illness. There are three broad pathways by which these effects can take place: directly, indirectly or via awareness. The direct pathway includes stress-related conditions caused by exposure to extreme weather events. These include post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Scientific studies have linked mental health to several climate-related exposures. These include heat, humidity, rainfall, drought, wildfires and floods. The indirect pathway can be disruption to economic and social activities. An example is when an area of farmland is less able to produce food. The third pathway can be of mere awareness of the climate change threat, even by individuals who are not otherwise affected by it.
Trauma-sensitive yoga is yoga as exercise, adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. Its goal is to help trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection, to ease their physiological experiences of trauma, to gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies, and to augment their overall well-being. However, a 2019 systematic review found that the studies to date were not sufficiently robustly designed to provide strong evidence of yoga's effectiveness as a therapy; it called for further research.
The science of yoga is the scientific basis of modern yoga as physical exercise in human sciences such as anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Yoga's effects are to some extent shared with other forms of exercise, though it differs in the amount of stretching involved, and because of its frequent use of long holds and relaxation, in its ability to reduce stress. Yoga is here treated separately from meditation, which has effects of its own, though yoga and meditation are combined in some schools of yoga.
Flywheel training is a type of strength training where the resistance required for muscle activation is generated by the inertia of a flywheel instead of gravity from weights as in traditional weight training.
Nature exposure and mental health refers to the association between an individual interacting with natural environments and its effect on the individual's mental health. Most studies consider any interaction with nature as exposure, such as a hike, being in a forest or a place with water, going on a walk in a park, etc. Currently there is extensive research on the impact of the exposure to nature on people, which finds a beneficial association in various ways. Studies show that the contact of human beings with nature has decreased with the contemporary lifestyle of being most of the time indoors and with increasing time spent on screens. However, the interaction with nature has been considered to be a general health promoter thanks to the many benefits it brings to mental health and cognition as well. As a consequence, therapists use nature in their treatments to improve mental or physical health. These treatments and techniques are called ecotherapy.
Shinrin-yoku, also known as forest bathing, is a practice or process of therapeutic relaxation where one spends time in a forest or natural atmosphere, focusing on sensory engagement to connect with nature.
