Korea Institute of Psycho-education: Birth, growth, aging, and death of the body and the mind

Human beings go through the process of birth, growth, aging, and death of both the body and the mind. The body and the mind are inter-connected, so the well-being of one affects the well-being of the other. When your body is sick, your mind can become weak, and vice versa. As children's body must be nourished for healthy growth, children's mind also need proper nourishment and protection for healthy development.

For the body and the mind grow and stay healthy, survival must be guaranteed first, so the development of child psychology focuses on survival until they become about 5 years old. Children under the age 5 hardly develop psychological problems when they are physically protected and well fed with tender loving care. When children are guaranteed for survival for the first 5 years or so, their psychological development begins to focus on adapting to human relationships. Children can maintain healthy psychology as far as they form good relationships with people around them until they become about 12 years old.

Then, children's psychological development focuses on the formation of self-identity during teenage years. They must be able to form their own thought standards and experience as many trials and errors as possible. Finally, when they become adults, they begin to pursue self-actualization in relationships with other people. They pursue values and meanings in life and being happy together with other people, and this process continues until they die.

Some people die when they are young, and others maintain health and live long. The physical conditions are different for every individual and individuals experience different physical conditions during their life, but we all wish for a healthy and long life. The same applies to the life of the mind. Everyone experiences unique and different psychological conditions during life, and we all wish for healthy and long life of our mind.

When children are not taken good care of during the growth period, they may have not only physical but also psychological problems even when they become adults. Children who do not receive proper care from parents during the phase of adaptation to relationships may suffer from difficulties with forming and maintaining good relationships with people. Teenagers who are deprived of opportunities to form their own thought standards may suffer from lack of confidence and tendency of dependency. They are more likely to develop psychological problems and relational conflicts when they become adults.

Psychological problems may be aggravated and developed into psychological disorders. Psychological disorders may be aggravated to the point where one's mind and psychology completely collapse unless they are properly treated. Then, the mind is considered to be dead even if the person's body is living.

Human beings are designed to pursue happiness with healthy mind in relationships with other people. However, when you have psychological disorders, you cannot maintain healthy relationships with other people and cannot achieve happiness in a true sense. People with psychological disorders inflict damage upon others and destroy human relationships with distorted self-conviction and irrational behaviors.

When your body is sick, you must provide the body with proper care and treatment. The same applies to the care of mind. When your child is sick, you would take all measures within your power to help him or her recover. It is also parents' responsibility to provide good care for children's mind and psychology. They must provide children with proper nourishment for each developmental phase of psychology until children become adults.

People show less concern about their mind having problems compared with their body having problems. Many people just take measures of diversion such as talking with friends or doing fun things. Some may try to forget and suppress their emotions or just ignore since they do not consider it as a serious matter. All of these approaches contribute to the aggravation of the condition forecasting more problems and more pain in the future.

The body becomes weak as you get older, and the mind gets weak as you stop pursuing self-actualization. Human beings need to experience a wide range of emotions to achieve emotions of happiness in the process of self-actualization. No one can do without ups and downs of emotions as sources of happiness in the course of life. When you stop pursuing self-actualization, you cannot experience the whole range of emotions and cannot generate emotions of happiness. Then, your mind is considered to have got old and weak. The aging of the mind has nothing to do with the aging of the body. The concept of happiness is lost when you decide to retire from self-actualization and you exist only as an individual without human relationships.

When you retire and decide to live as you please focusing only on survival, human relationships are not important in your life any more. You don't have to learn new things or adapt yourself to new environments and may develop more and more self-conviction and self-justification. It also happens when young people decide to retire early and just enjoy personal life without pursuing self-actualization. Their mind is considered to be old even when their biological age is young.

We must do our best to maintain psychological health as well as physical health throughout the life time. We cannot choose when to be born and when to die, but we can choose other matters. Our body is designed to pursue physical health and our mind is designed to pursue happiness, which is achieved through experiencing both positive and negative emotions in human relationships instead of pursuing comfort and pleasure. It is crucial to accurately understand the operational mechanism of human mind and psychology and maintain the psychological balance to live happily through the journey of life.