 Why You Should Be Grateful Every Day, by Lozolia Bazuzzi. For centuries, cultures around the world have linked the mind-body connection with mental well-being and spiritual insight. It's often associated with religious practices and emotional healing. Eastern societies have dominated a holistic approach to maintaining internal balance and psychological health. However, we seem to have lost these aspects of earlier human tradition in our fast-paced, modern Western civilization. Mental disorders in the United States and Canada are treated by quick fixes, be it prescription SSRIs, labels that excuse irrational behavior, or passive therapies. These aren't necessarily bad. Without a doubt, millions of people have benefited from scientific research and breakthroughs in psychological study. However, focusing solely on the technical aspects of mental illness has ended up ignoring important details of the human being that lies within the cell. Simple practices like mindfulness, positive affirmations, and meditative thought are believed to promote resilience and reduce negative mentality. Lately, there's been an increase in empirical scientific evidence to back this up. Take gratitude, for example. Expressing and feeling gratitude towards someone or something external has been shown to have intrapersonal benefits. In 2003, Emmons and McCullough were the first to study the effects of counting blessings on mental health. Adult participants were randomly assigned tasks where they had to record on a daily or weekly basis their hassles, expressions of gratitude, or neutral affairs. At the end of the study period, there was a correlation between the group that expressed gratitude and a heightened sense of mental and physical well-being. Participants that recorded their blessings on a regular basis reported a more positive outlook on their livelihoods, as well as decreased physical symptoms and coping behaviors, unlike the hassle-listing and neutral groups. A few years later, the same experiment was done by Fro Etal on school-age children. Their results were parallel to their adult counterparts. The group of young adolescent children that recorded their blessings on a regular basis were more optimistic and satisfied with their lives in comparison to the students who reflected on their day-to-day hassles or neutral events. The results of the study were particularly exciting, not only because they warded off mental ailment symptoms, but because they showed a relation between students' gratitude and improved satisfaction with their school experience, a possible link between gratitude and increased academic performance. Although the results of these studies are favorable, showing the profound advantages of routinely expressing gratitude even over the period of a few weeks, gratitude is a rather difficult term to define, especially when it comes to identifying how it benefits mental health. Gratitude has been identified as an emotion, habitual act, and a virtue of morality among other things. One must remember too that simply talking or writing about gratitude is not necessarily the same as feeling it or actively practicing it. Even so, when one reflects on the positive aspects of their lives, they experience an improved mood, prosocial behavior, and a heightened status of their mental well-being. To illustrate this, think of the fact that for over 2,500 years, Buddhist teachings have concentrated on treating mental instability among Eastern culture, and have helped define states of mental well-being to optimal functioning using strategies like regularly expressing gratitude and mindfulness. Mental disorders, although complex conditions involving factors that contribute to the development of symptoms, can be addressed effectively by changing small daily habits that tackle one's mind, brain, body, and spirit. By working on these aspects of one's being, an individual seeking assistance may improve the quality of his life. Psychological disorders can be effectively treated if knowledge from generations of Eastern-based traditions are incorporated into Western scientific study. So, what are you waiting for? Counting your blessings today and every other day is sure to benefit your overall health. Have you practiced gratitude and mindfulness today? Comment below to tell us how you've done so and what benefits you've experienced doing so.