Dr. Helena Lass’ revolutionary approach to mental wellness

The arena of mental health has been stagnating for some time, as there is no single gene known to cause psychiatric illnesses there are no simple medical solutions. Historically the focus on mental health topics has been placed on disorders and their cure. However, prevention has been missing.

The overwhelming majority of methods in psychology have been developed as forms of intervention for a therapy setting and not as proactive education.

When you consider that every fourth person on the planet faces some kind of mental health problem, it is alarming that the importance of personal and social strategies for mental wellness has been massively overlooked for years.

It is in this context that psychiatrist Dr. Helena Lass has put forward the hypothesis that early proactive intervention in the form of structured inner education increases the quality of life and decreases the chances of stress, burnout, depression, anxiety, etc., all of which have become epidemic in their proportions and have serious consequences on individuals, families and companies alike.

Preventative Side of the Mental Health Equation

The scientific paper by Dr. Lass 'Developing Intra-Personal Skills as a Proactive Way to Personal Sustainability – The Preventative Side of the Mental Health Equation' brings forward a compelling argument for a proactive approach to mental health. Within this article, Dr. Lass outlines a new proactive approach to mental health as something that everyone should actively strive towards.

This scientific paper shifts the focus from the external reactive problem-solving approaches towards a more proactive education on mental wellness, whereby people who are still relatively well can learn new skills to prevent further escalation of negative states into illness. Giving practical skills that enable everyone to stay well is the essence of the mental wellness revolution.

ALL HUMANS EXPERIENCE INTRA-PERSONAL EVENTS AND HAVE MENTAL HEALTH

Dr. Lass researched a wealth of scientific papers and found that “there is strong and repeated evidence that intra-personal events have a direct effect on the function and structure of the brain and therefore the skills to direct these events can most likely lead to changes in wiring and neurotransmitter activity in the human brain”. However, “none of the existing modalities in evidence-based psychotherapy has provided an applicable education towards re-establishing the human’s most natural state, where we identify with Self rather than ego and provided methods to systematically discontinue the automatic reactions that people have started to consider normal and become identified with.” That is why the scientific paper brings into focus the internal domain and sets forth that basic intrapersonal skills formulate the cornerstone of self-leadership.

Dr. Lass states that in reality "all humans possess an internal realm and experience intra-personal events on a daily basis such as feeling emotions, learning, thinking, planning, focusing and leading our attention, having an ability to investigate, gaining an insight, etc."

BRINGING FORWARD A STRUCTURED MENTAL WELLNESS APPROACH

This scientific paper states that a "structured approach to intra-personal functions enables the entities that people describe as the mind, Self, awareness, subconscious, spirit, ego, etc., to obtain a clearer meaning and a practical reference."

The paper classified those inner functions into three meta-types: emotional functions, mental-cognitive functions and awareness-related functions. Different "intra-personal functions and events emerge in parallel with brain neurodynamics and coordinate the functioning of each other through instant feedback loops."

Intrapersonal skills are our pathway to securing excellent mental wellness. Dr. Lass writes, "Mental wellness in its rightful context would mean a certain ease in directing those internal processes. This becomes possible if we are able to differentiate between specific intra-personal functions and understand their patterns and combinations."

“Until people are educated to exercise methods of conscious control over their emotional activation, it is only a matter of time when some of the destructive automatic emotional-mental complexes get triggered and initiate a cascade of problematic events, including irrational or destructive behavior.” Only when people learn to discontinue these automatic complexes can they re-establish their actual identity with the Self, giving them the freedom to decide whether or not to engage in an internal reaction, as well as direct all internal functions in an optimal way.
 

THE SHIFT TOWARDS WORKPLACE MENTAL WELLNESS

The fundamental shift from the external towards the internal well-being points out that mental wellness is a vast arena. Mental health should primarily relate to the essential quality of life and not be only associated with mental illnesses. This scientific paper presents a unique path to future mental health-related studies and points out possible new solutions. On this wellbeing website, we have carefully developed practical applications of those solutions for you and your team.

When people learn and realize in practice how their own inner domain functions, a more sustainable way of handling as well as preventing mental health problems can emerge. As one would expect, that demands that learning practical intrapersonal skills is easily accessible. 

We can witness a profound shift in workplace mental wellness when people practice the learned intrapersonal skills in their daily work situations. As a direct result, workplaces would genuinely enjoy considerable improvements in mental strength that graciously allows their staff and work results to thrive.