First-Aid Kits
Making a kit. From your reading of this chapter, you know that many first-aid measures do not require any equipment. However, the cuts, scrapes, and scratches that occur in a large proportion of all accidents do need some treatment. You should remember that poisonings, sprains. wounds, and shock also require some equipment. You may need to have it handy.
A first-aid kit should be large enough to contain all of the supplies necessary to treat an emergency situation. It should be small enough to be portable, and inexpensive enough to be practical.
If you like, you can purchase a pre-packaged first-aid kit. You will probably need two kits, one for the home and one for the car. The following list of contents is intended as a basic guide and may be lengthened at the desire of any first-aider, provided that no items are dangerous.
Maintaining Mental Health - Understanding feelings of rebellion
Understanding feelings of rebellion. When you have become as old as you are now, you may find that you disagree with some of your parents’ and teachers’ values and ways of doing things. You feel that you want to make decisions for yourself and do not want someone to make them for you. You are learning to become independent and are forming more of your own personality.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that sooner or later you will work out your own ways of doing things. Instead of going your own way and ignoring the advice of adults completely, talk over some of your problems with your parents, clergyman, guidance counselor, and teachers. It may surprise you to find that they can be a great help in finding answers to your problems.
Never forget the possibility that you may be rebelling against people just for the sake of rebellion. You may be so eager to show that you are mature that you forget that most of your parents’ values are extremely sound. It is a mature person who can look at his own feelings of rebellion and realize that sometimes they have little basis in reality. If you can look at your feelings in this way, you have taken a giant step toward adulthood.
After you have considered these four areas of mental health–maintaining self-confidence, making adjustments, controlling emotions, and understanding feelings of rebellion—-you may have a better idea of the ways to change your personality and maintain good mental health.
Try This
Make a list of all the emotions you have felt today. Check the ones you think were not controlled as well as they could have been. Check the emotions you have felt today that you feel were of value to you.
Maintaining Mental Health - Making adjustments
Making adjustments. A second aspect of good mental health is the ability to make adjustments to different situations. You cannot succeed in everything you do, and in order to be happy you will have to adjust to situations in which you do not get what you want and to situations that you do not enjoy.
There are many things that could happen to make you unhappy or to disappoint you. Perhaps you worked hard and tried out for a part in a class play. But you failed to get the part. You may have needed more practice, or you may have failed to get the part because there were others competing for the part who had more talent and skill. Or perhaps someone else got the part simply because he seemed to fit the part better, physically.
There are several ways you could react to such a failure. You could lose your temper and complain loudly, making everyone around you uncomfortable. You could stay by yourself and daydream about being a successful and greatly admired actor or actress. You could make excuses for not going to the play and even become ill the day of the performance. But none of these would be a satisfactory adjustment. These are all ways of running away from the real difficulty.
What are some of the ways you could adjust? You could use the method of compensation. In this method, you would decide to do something to help make the play a success, whether that would mean painting scenery, selling tickets, ushering, or making posters. If you failed to act as well as others, you could accept the fact that you did not quite "measure up," and that perhaps you never would become good enough to take part in a play. Then, you could enjoy other activities that make a play a success. When you use the method of compensation to adjust to a failure, you are showing a mature attitude and signs of good mental health.
Think for Yourself
In what situations is compensation a mature method of reacting?
Maintaining Mental Health
As you have learned in the previous section, one way to improve your personality is to improve your mental health. Your adolescence is the time between your childhood and your adult years when your personality begins to assume new importance for you. During these years you form much of the personality that will be yours in years to come. And it is during these years that the knowledge of mental health and personality will be of the most help to you.
The descriptions of four major signs of mental health that appear in this section contain suggestions for maintaining your mental health and improving your personality. You can use many of the ideas presented here to help you know yourself and the reactions you commonly make. You can use the ideas to help you better understand your feelings. They can also help you understand your parents and your relationship to them.
Personality and Mental Health
What is mental health? Mental health concerns feelings, attitudes, and abilities. It is the way a person reacts to other people and situations. A per — son’s mental health may be judged by two criteria , or tests. The first is the person’s ability to "fit in," or adjust, to different situations. The second is the person’s ability to accept or change situations which cause frustration. Perhaps this ability to accept situations which cause feelings of discouragement is the more difficult of the two. Both these abilities not only reflect a person’s mental health, but also are reflected in his personality.
Think for Yourself
Do you think that a person with good mental health always has good physical health?
What is personality? There are many definitions of personality. Most people use the word to mean the total impression a person makes on other people. It is the reflection of your habits, traits, feelings, abilities, and even your appearance. Part of your personality was formed by the time you were born. Part of it has not yet been formed. It is affected by your environment, or surroundings, and may change from time to time.
Often, people say, "He has a cheerful personality," or, "She has a quiet personality." These people are describing obvious personality traits. Actually, no one’s personality is simple enough to be described in a word, or in even a thousand words. Whole books, for instance, have been written about one person’s greed, temper, or dedication. You know that any of these qualities could form only a fraction of a person’s total personality.
Health of your personality. Have you noticed that mental health and personality are closely related? In a sense, your mental health is the health of your personality. Because your emotions, abilities, habits, and attitudes affect both, your attempts to improve one will probably improve the other. For example, if you improve your personality by becoming more tactful, you may find that you are better able to enjoy parties and social occasions as a result. In that case, your attempt to improve your personality would have improved your mental health, also.
Personality Traits
Knowing yourself. As you wrote your list of personality traits, you may have noticed that some of your personal qualities are more outstanding than others. Everyone has some traits which are less desirable than others. Being able to judge your own personality traits is an important asset. When you know yourself, you can begin eliminating the undesirable traits and adding others that are more desirable.
Changing traits. Once you know what you would like to improve, you can make an effort to acquire the new habits and attitudes that you find worthwhile. The first step in this process is making an effort to acquire new traits. If you find that thoughtfulness is a trait you want to develop, you can begin by making an effort to be thoughtful of others. You can try to be aware of the wishes of others at all times. As thinking of others becomes a habit, you will find you have developed the trait of thoughtfulness.
In your effort to acquire new traits, you must make and effort to be sincere. There is a difference between appearing thoughtful and being thoughtful. In the first instance the person is being dishonest with those about him. He is pretending to be something he is not. This lack of sincerity is easily sensed by one’s friends. They do not respect a person who is “putting on” a trait only for his own gain. It is only by being sincere in your effort to change some of your personality traits that you can make any change in your personality.
Your Personality and Your Family
You probably know people who have pleasant “personalities,” others with little “personality,” and still others with unpleasant “personalities.” Perhaps you have thought about the reasons these people make the impressions they do. Have you discovered that people with good personalities show certain qualities and that people with poor personalities lack these qualities? Did you know that you can improve your personality?
These questions and many like them are important to people your age. Everyone knows how important it is to be well liked by his classmates and teachers. It is easy to see that a pleasant personality can make a person more successful at school and at home.
In this chapter you will learn some of the ways people can improve their personalities. You can also find out how teen-agers have learned to make themselves happier and more successful by improving their personal attitudes and habits.
