Staying mission-ready means having a healthy, high functioning mind, which connects to every domain of Total Force Fitness. The Total Force Fitness concept focuses on a service member’s entire health throughout their career, through eight dimensions of fitness to optimize health, performance, and readiness holistically.
Mental Health and Psychological Fitness
TFF Psychological Fitness Domain: Psychological Fitness is the ability to integrate and improve cognitive, emotional, and behavioral practices.
Messages for Communicators
Expand to See Messages for Communicators
- One way to maintain psychological health is to stay socially connected, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
- Numerous stressors are associated with the pandemic including social isolation, which not only impacts day-to-day tasks, such as educating children, but also carries an emotional impact that can be burdensome for many.
- Using technology to call loved ones and video chat or play games with friends and family helps us stay connected.
- In addition, it is important to avoid negative coping skills that many people fall into during this stressful time, including alcohol or drug use, which can worsen mental and physical distress.
- Anxiety can stem from uncertainty and lack of control, impacting psychological health. To reduce anxiety, focus on things you can control, like maintaining and following an organized schedule.
- Stigma remains a significant barrier to seeking mental health care. The DOD strives to address and reduce stigma through programs and policies.
Mental Health and Environmental Fitness
TFF Environmental Fitness Domain: Environmental Fitness is the ability to perform your tasks in any operational environment.
Messages for Communicators
Expand to See Messages for Communicators
- Environmental conditions (like heat or humidity) impact our physical performance but can also affect your mental wellbeing and performance.
- Service members experience unique environmental challenges in combat and military operations, which are inherently stressful. Service members train hard to prepare mentally and physically for deployment, but they cannot completely avoid the stressors in their environment that come with serving.
- Be it exposure to extreme environmental conditions, lack of sleep, physical stress, or bearing witness to traumatic events, service members face a wide array of operational stressors.
- Employing stress reduction techniques is critical to address combat and operations stress reactions. Suggestions include seeking peer support, promoting a healthy lifestyle, using meditation or yoga to help with relaxation, and avoiding unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as heavy drinking or substance use.
- One way to improve mental health is to control aspects of our environment we can, such optimizing our work location, getting fresh air during the day, or taking time to tidy up joint working and living space.
- Too much social media has been shown to have adverse mental health consequences, such as depression. For improved mental health, spend more time socializing and less time on social media.
- Too much news intake can also impact environmental fitness. Keeping up with what’s happening in your community and in the world is important, but lots of negative news can contribute to stress and anxiety. For better mental health, limit the amount of time you spend focusing on the news.
You also may be interested in...
Showing results 1 - 3
Page 1 of 1