Body processes

Mood – Function, Task & Diseases

Mood

The frame of mind or mood is a prolonged emotional state. Moods can be different from time to time and are subject to strong fluctuations. The state of mind is influenced by many factors and ranges from depression to balance to euphoric feelings.

What’s the mood?

The mind is more than the sum of pure feelings. The emotional life is strongly linked to values ​​and cannot be explained purely logically. Individual experiences, every dream, every experience and your own fantasies create an image that resonates in the assessment of every situation.

The unity and health of our psyche is determined by the totality of all emotional and volitional impulses that we have acquired over time. The psychic sensations of the mind differ from the emotional feeling, which is determined by the heart. A person’s state of mind also affects how they interact with others.

The state of mind is a subject of psychology and is one of the areas that take place inside the human being. Nevertheless, the mood of a person can be recognized by their facial expressions , gestures and spoken sentences. The mood assigns an emotional coloring to the experience.

Psychology distinguishes four basic moods: happy, optimistic, melancholic and threatening. The moods create functional states in the organism, so they have biological effects. These, in turn, can also cause serious disruptions.

function & task

The world of feelings includes many mental and spiritual phenomena and people can describe their emotional experience in general or very precisely. There are elementary feelings like love , awe or disgust and thousands of nuances that move us to action. 

Mind and soul are closely related. Our mood is a sensor for us and for our outside world. From our mood, our counterpart can recognize the state of mind we are in at the moment and direct his actions accordingly. Exactly the same thing happens in reverse. Mood is a sensitive measuring instrument that already signals without words how resilient, how happy or aggressive we currently feel.

The mood can be influenced both positively and negatively by external factors such as the behavior of our environment, but also by nutrition and health-promoting measures.

The mind is the basis of moral education. A mental and spiritual attitude towards the positive, the good and the beautiful can be cultivated.

This is shaped by values ​​such as trust, love, gratitude, mercy, justice, helpfulness, devotion, reliability, willpower, sense of duty, beauty and religiosity. All these qualities underlie good action.

Pressure is on the mind. The longer pressure lasts, the more our mood is affected. Consciously perceiving the environment and concentrating on the moment is a strategy for coping with stress .

Exercise concepts also play a major role in combating stress, because the positive effects of sport have been proven. Music has similarly good effects in dealing with stress. The better we know our own mood barometer, the easier it is for us to avoid stressful situations and look for positive ones. Prolonged emotional stress can lead to serious psychological problems.

Diseases & Ailments

Mental health is influenced by thousands of factors. We all know situations in which diseases hit the mind and put us in a negative mood. This is especially true for chronic pain. But even a sick mind can have a severe impact on health and affect organs . 

Diseases of the mind, however, are not so easily defined, since they arise far less from a locatable space than do physical processes. Restoring a person’s mental health is the task of psychotherapists. Treatment can be on an outpatient basis or in inpatient facilities.

Illnesses of the mind are still a taboo subject and those affected usually find their way to the doctor too late. According to surveys by the health insurance companies, every fifth employed person suffers from mental disorders. That is about 10% of the total sick leave. The trend is rising.

Circumstances of life play a major role in diseases of the mind. This often leads to existential fears about losing one’s job and early retirement, the dissolution of family ties, loneliness and fear of poverty in old age. In the worst case, this can lead to suicide. In Germany there are about 15,000 suicides per year and more than 200,000 suicide attempts.

Isolation from the outside world can be depressing. Mood is not that easy to measure, which has often led to medical misjudgments. Many people have been classified as mentally ill in the past because the outside world couldn’t cope with their mood swings. Today we know that many of these people classified as sick were just significantly more sensitive than others.

The most common illness of the exhausted mind is depression . The manifestations of depression are strongly determined by social circumstances. Mental suffering manifests itself mainly in the loss of the will to live. The emotional world of those affected is characterized by hopelessness and feelings of guilt. For many, the only way out is suicide. It is all the more important to pay attention to the environment in order to be able to offer help and security.

Lisa Newlon
Website | + posts

Hello! I am Lisa Newlon, and I am a medical writer and researcher with over 10 years of experience in the healthcare industry. I have a Master’s degree in Medicine, and my deep understanding of medical terminology, practices, and procedures has made me a trusted source of information in the medical world.