This is just another version of the fundamental human project described by Sam Harris, but with the additional stipulation that there are limitations. But don’t we all have limitations of some kind?? To be clear, a psychiatric disorder is a special kind of limitation that is extremely difficult to overcome without serious interventional therapies. We don’t all face an impediment quite like that. But there’s more to mental health than just the absence of a psychiatric illness — mental health relates to well-being and resilience as well as how we think, feel, and act. A mental health problem is anything that reduces these capacities, which includes but is not limited to psychiatric disorders. Mental health is a resource in the same way that general health is — its levels can be increased and decreased on a continuing basis. In times of stress or times of grief, the levels are likely to dip. We’ve all felt this happen to us, and so we all know what it’s like to have a problem with mental health, even if only slightly and temporarily. Recovery is therefore not a task unique to those with mental illness, but rather a process we all go through from time to time. And this process is just one manifestation of the fundamental human pursuit of desirable states of consciousness.
Just as health can be depleted by things like stress and isolation, it can be bolstered and increased by love, joy, social support, fulfilling work, and so on. Helping a person recover does not have to be a grand production — it can be as simple as helping them find a reason to be happy, or anything else that improves their mental life by even just a slight bit. Small improvements can add up to a large increase. My sole piece of counsel on offer to someone hard at work on the business of recovering: remember that what you go through is not strange or out of the ordinary.