Voting is good for your mental health.Who needs to hear that voting is good for your health who does not know it? This has been a topic of discussion with many professionals, and church goers think that they are not supposed to be involved in voting will stun you. Take a time reading this message and see why it is your responsibility to determine who should be directing the things that affects your day-to-day life. There is nothing you can do that is not linked to politics and choosing to ignore this will be a fatal mistake and misleading. The impacts of voting and political decisions touch nearly every facet of daily life activities, from safety, to housing, to education, transport, money, food, welfare and even our health.
A responsible person should be involved in civic life activities by participating as this contributes to the improvement of their social well-being. By participating we urge you to be actively involved by going to vote because even choosing to be neutral is participation, by letting others determine things that will affect you is fatal. Participation help you feel connected and belonging, and change the way individuals interact with the world around them. This is what defines you as a Zimbabwean as this will determine who you are as it defines Zimbabwe as a community. I have heard several times people saying that, as Zimbabwe we lack identity, but wait, isn’t this what we are? It’s high time to define this for the sack of our kids and generations to come. Voting promotes social connectedness and this is really important for physical health, because when you become active, doing things, your mental state will be subjective and, because social capital relates to an underlying ideal that can determine health status.
Voting is one of the main ways that we can speak up and directly influence the conditions that can improve our own health and the health of our community. Overwhelmingly, politics of the day have been affecting each and every one of us to be whom we ought to be. Encourage your children, take them out to register and vote. Make sure you wake up early with them on the voting day and let them exercise their right. The reason we say this is because most, university students think that by the time they finish school things will have changed. Mind you UBA & USA listen to me very careful; a degree is just three or four years meaning that you start a program and finish it before those people you neutrally elected in power still there and you will find the environment more toxic. Get up and determine what your future should be today.
The good news is that there are ways we can break this cycle. Young adults who vote and are civically engaged have been shown to have better mental health, achieve higher levels of education, and have higher incomes. It should be noted that helping people exercise their right to vote is not the same as trying to influence whom or what someone votes for. So, if your doctor asks you if you are registered to vote, know that it is not a question they are posing just to get in your business. It is directly tied to your health. I hope that you are registered and plan to vote. If not, you can still register.
There is a saying that when it comes to decisions being made about public policy, either you are at the table or you are on the menu. Let’s make sure our community’s health is a priority on the 2023 table. Why do we make such statements? It is because the factors that facilitate social environments and health are varied and span far beyond medical care. Politics has a hand in most factors in one way or another. “Nearly everything we experience is influenced by government one way or the other. While these may not immediately impact individual biology, they do impact the social environment we find ourselves in, subsequently impacting our health status. Broadly speaking, how we improve public health has to come from a lot of areas, and we have to look beyond just health care.”
We tend to rely on government programs all the time, one way or the other we do but we don’t bother to check the person we are putting ahead to make health decisions for us. It’s high time we settle for one who identifies with us and are always keen to listen to what the community is saying. This is good for us and our children as things we take for granted always come to haunt us for a long time and others, we end up failing to change them if they take too much time in place.
Studies have sort as well to determine if voting is beneficial to people and yes indeed it is. There is also research that shows voting can actually make people healthier. “When a person is involved with civic life, they are social, efficacious, and participating,” My esteemed brothers and sisters register and vote.
The Social Ecological Model of Health is one way to visualize this idea. The model suggests that an individual’s health is determined not only by their biology and individual choices, but also the community they live in, the systems they interact with, and the societal norms that shape their realities. Health begins with the genes you inherit from your parents, but it grows into how you are affected by your social environment.
The Social Ecological Model. Image credit: CDC.gov Who
As with every election, the people have the power to determine the values of the society we will continue to live in, a society that impacts nearly every facet of our day-to-day lives, regardless of how visible they are. We have to decide what we want morally, economically, and politically. And this certainly has an impact on well-being. “A lot of people talk about a right to health and while we can’t ensure that, we can elect people whom we can be in a position to demand it from. No matter what this support looks like, whether it is directed to health policy or otherwise, the people have the power to facilitate not only their personal health, but the determinants around them and that can shape it. This is the foundation of a healthy society.