Growing older is a gift and an opportunity to live your best life with the benefit of decades of knowledge and experience. There are many ways to make the most of your golden years and work to avoid some of the mental health or cognitive issues some face. The most common mental health conditions elderly people face are anxiety, depression (including bipolar depression), and cognitive impairment. The severities of each will differ from senior to senior, but it is important that we understand how to take care of our mental health as we grow older.
If you have a caregiver or are close with your family, it’s important that you keep them in tune with how you are feeling. You may not be feeling your best due to the loss of a friend or a spouse, but you must keep your family and caregiver involved. They can help you significantly and can even help incorporate activities into your daily routine to improve your mental health.
Let’s look at some of the ways you can take care of your mental health with simple activities as you grow older.
Daily Activities That Improve Mental Health
Along with your body, you should be exercising your mind. Mind games can help you keep your mind engaged and increase your brain’s health. This is true for physical activities as well. Here are some of the ways you can stay active, physically and mentally:
- Play Mind Games or Do a Puzzle: Mind games and puzzles are a great way to keep your brain working. When you do puzzles regularly, it can delay your memory decline as you grow older. They can even enhance your mental health. This type of activity will improve your cognition as you grow older.
- Learn a New Language: Learning a new language is a great exercise for the brain and can help you stay on top of your memory. Learning a language can be fun as a senior and can help you feel more confident when you remember things you learned.
- Reading and Writing: As you get older, you should keep a journal. This can help you remember events that happened throughout your day and can improve your mental health by writing down everything you are feeling. If you don’t feel comfortable telling your caregiver or a family member how you have been feeling lately, journaling can help you get out everything, helping you feel relieved.
- Learn to Play an Instrument: Music is one of those things that everybody loves, and depending on the type of music, it can make people of all ages happy. As you grow older, it’s important to keep music in your life, and you can do this by learning an instrument!
- Stay Active: Physical activity is such a great way to keep your body moving and improve your mobility. As you get older, you won’t be able to move around as much as when you were younger, which may cause you to feel discouraged. That’s why staying active can help a lot. You can get your stress out with physical activities while also having fun doing them. You can become more physically agile and gain confidence as you feel better to move on your own.
- Stay Social: You’ll inevitably lose friends as life goes on, but staying connected to the ones that are still here can improve your mental health. This is because you will continue to make those happy memories until the end. You can do this by going out to lunch with your friends on a weekly basis or even just FaceTiming them from time to time. No matter how you stay in touch, it’s important that you do to improve your mental health.
These are all great activities to incorporate into your daily life as you get older. No matter what age you are, as you grow older, all these activities will improve your mental health. Whether you add one or all these activities to your daily life, you’ll help yourself stay healthy mentally.
