What is Emotional Health?
Emotional health is the set of skills and beliefs that shape our thoughts, feelings and
behaviours. It is affected throughout our lives by our relationships and our experience of
the relationships around us.
What does good emotional health look like?
Good emotional health is being aware of, understanding and managing our
whole range of emotions. Positive relationships support us to build healthy beliefs about
ourselves and others.
Our evidence-based emotional health model
There are seven components of emotional health, and while each is important within its
own right, it’s how they work together that forms our emotional health.
Having good emotional health supports us with how we feel, think, behave and interact
with those around us. These skills and beliefs impact our quality of life as well as providing
us with protective factors if we’re experiencing physical or mental health problems.
Why is Emotional Health important?
In order to build and sustain healthy relationships, we need to have responsive relationships with others. This is a key component of good emotional health. We also know that a stable, responsive environment is essential for children to develop the foundations of resilience and good, lifelong emotional, mental and physical health. Therefore, in order for the next generation to thrive, we need to support the adults in children’s lives to develop their own emotional health assets, so they can then provide responsive relationships to the children in their care. This creates healthy inter-generational patterns of relating, which benefit families, communities and ultimately society.
ii Goodman, A., Joshi, H., Nasim, B., & Tyler, C. (2015). Social and emotional skills in childhood and their long-term effects on adult
life. London: Institute of Education.
iii Hughes, K., Ford, K., Davies, A., Homolova, L., & Bellis, M. (2018). Sources of resilience and their moderating relationships with
harms from adverse childhood experiences: Welsh Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) and Resilience Study – Report 1:
Mental Illness. Public Health Wales NHS Trust.
iv Layard, R., Clark, A. E., Cornaglia, F., Powdthavee, N., & Vernoit, J. (2014). What predicts a successful life? A life-course model of
well-being. The Economic Journal, 124(580), F720-F738
v Feinstein, L. (2015). Social and emotional learning: Skills for life and work. Early Intervention Foundation.
If you’d like to talk to us about our work, please contact us via hello@emotionalhealth.org.uk or call us on 01865 401800. To find out more about our training courses for professionals, email training@emotionalhealth.org.uk