If you are looking for some light reading to improve your emotional health, these emotional health articles are the right place to start! Okay, so some of them are not exactly light, but they are all worth a read.

Finding great resources is not always easy, especially when it comes to emotional health. It is nuanced, and people lump it in with mental health all the time. While the two are certainly connected, they are not the same thing!

What is more, legitimately researched articles are often barred by a pay barrier. Not everyone wants to pay to learn about something. In fact, most people would rather not pay. That is why Google, Wikipedia, and YouTube are all so popular!

So what do you do then, when you are looking for some solid education about emotional health but do not want to pay a ton of money for it?

You come here, of course. While not all of the emotional health articles below are strictly research articles, every single research article I have listed is free.

What I am saying is, I used my grad school research skills to spend hours combing google scholar so that you do not have to. All of the helpful, informative, and free to access emotional health articles I found are below.

Emotional Health Articles Everyone Should Read

Alright, let’s get some things straight before we just dive into all these emotional health articles. While every person’s journey with emotional health is different, there are some similarities.

We begin by increasing our awareness and knowledge of emotional health. We do this by learning about emotional health in general, and our personal emotional health specifically.

Once we have a good grasp of what we are working with, we start looking for things that would benefit from change or improvement. We do not change ourselves, we improve some of our habits and/or behaviors.

After investing in some personal TLC, we move towards maintenance. Like any good habit, you do not just do it for a few months and then move on to a completely new thing. You find ways to maintain the progress you have made.

Along with following the general flow of emotional wellness, there is also a mix of scholarly and layperson articles. I find that scholarly articles are great for the “why” of things, while layperson articles are great for the “how” of things.

The layperson articles tend to be the easiest to comprehend, and are listed first. To be clear, the layperson articles are still from professionals, just not scientific research studies. The scholarly, scientific research articles follow as options to deepen knowledge and understanding.

So, without any further ado, here are the emotional health articles everyone needs to read.

Building Awareness of Emotional Health Articles

The articles below are about what emotional health is and the role it plays in our lives. For a great primer, check out my article on emotional wellness. It will give you a basic definition of what emotional wellness is and how to begin improving it.

After that, check out the articles below to get a more in-depth education.

Layperson Article: What Is Emotional Health?

I love this article because it differentiates emotional health from mental health. People across the board, including professionals, tend to lump the two in together.

However, as we know, they are separate. This article is helpful with understanding the difference between the two.

I also like it because it speaks to the importance of being able to process, understand, and use our emotions to our benefit.

Scholar Article: Emotional Literacy

Check this article out for another great primer on emotional wellbeing! It is seriously one of the best for giving a clear definition of what emotional literacy/health is and ways that you can develop it.

It goes into several different strategies you can use to increase and maintain your emotional wellbeing, making it an all-around comprehensive and useful article.

Another thing that I love about this article is that it educates on how to communicate our emotions more effectively. It is one thing for us to understand our emotions, and another thing entirely to be able to communicate them to someone else.

This article is just overall very helpful, straightforward, and reader-friendly.

Scholar Article: Emotional Intelligence: Components and Correlates

If you are looking for some extraordinarily deep information about feelings and emotions, this article by Michael Bernet is the article for you. It goes so far as to differentiate between feelings and emotions!

The reflection on how emotional intelligence is a subset of social intelligence is interesting as well. Our emotional wellbeing comes across in our social wellbeing more than we might think.

Being a therapist, I love how it talks about how helpful therapy can be for emotional wellness. Even better though, it discusses what makes therapy helpful.

Scholar Article: Emotional Health as a Predictor of Academic and/or Professional Success

Like the article above, this one discusses the origin of emotional intelligence in regard to social intelligence. What is more, it takes a look at how emotional intelligence lends itself to more success academically and professionally.

While the sample size is small for this study and it is directed specifically at careers in the health field, its results are still very interesting.

Take, for example, its results that higher emotional wellbeing results in higher professional success. How many other areas would higher emotional health improve?

That is the beauty of research–it begins with one or two questions and ends with so many more.

Increasing Emotional Health Articles

You will see more of the crossover between emotional and mental health in this section of emotional health articles. Honestly, a lot of people just do not make a distinction between the two.

Regardless, the articles here provide different strategies and resources for increasing emotional wellbeing. Even if they tend to define it more like mental wellbeing, the strategies still work!

Emotional Wellness Toolkit

I love all the resources offered in this article! It is really more of a gathering of resources than an actual article, but that makes it so that you can find the information you need relatively easily.

This buffet-type setup gives you options for reducing stress, developing positivity, dealing with loss, and a handful of other great topics. Reading through them all will give you a great start on things you can do to improve your emotional wellness.

Scholar Article: Interaction Design & Emotional Wellbeing

While this article’s definition of emotional wellbeing tends to lean more toward mental wellbeing, the information it contains is still highly informative and relevant.

For example, it discusses different modalities for increasing emotional wellness. It is especially helpful that it considers the benefits of utilizing technology to deliver emotional wellness interventions.

And you cannot help but love how concise this one is! You will not have to wade through pages of background material to get to the outcomes. They are found right away on the second page!

Scholar Article: Increasing Emotional Intelligence Through Training

This article looks into what kinds of training helps a person increase their emotional intelligence. The study looked at many groups of people, from managers in professional settings to students in both primary and secondary schools.

Taking a look at multiple factors that could contribute to higher emotional intelligence, this article covers a lot of territory. It is one of those “a mile wide, an inch deep” type articles that is great for getting the brain working.

Maintaining Emotional Health Articles

We all know how easy it is to begin healthy habits, and how hard it is to keep them going. This is why gyms are full in January and empty by March. (No judgment–I have a whole host of failed New Year’s resolutions in my repertoire!)

With that in mind, these emotional health articles are aimed toward maintaining emotional health once the initial drive to do so has worn off. Motivation can be a fickle friend, after all.

Layperson Article: 10 Tips on How to Stay Mentally and Emotionally Healthy

While this article tends to be more about overall wellbeing than specifically emotional health, there are some nuggets of wisdom in it. Honestly, its suggestions have a lot to do with self-care.

At the end of the day, self-care is one of the best things a person can do for their health. Of course, self-care is rather all-encompassing (with everything from eating your veggies to taking out the trash). It is no wonder it is such a powerful tool for wellbeing.

Scholar Article: Successful Aging: Focus on Cognitive & Emotional Health

Not all research is created equal. This longitudinal study has a great sample size of 1,000 adults–that’s a ton!

The focus may be on older adults, but it discusses successful aging over a person’s lifespan. Every age can find something relatable and useful in this article.

If you are not a research nerd and do not care as much about all the statistics, skip ahead to the section, “Interventions to Promote Successful Cognitive and Emotional Aging”. This part is a wealth of information on what you can do now to improve your emotional and cognitive health later.

Scholar Article: Effects of Physical Activity, Social Support, & Skills Training on Late-Life Emotional Health

Similar to the article above, this article takes a look at what to do now to be emotionally healthy later in life. It is a classic literature review article, which is research that analyzes research that has already been done to find common threads and variables. Not just all the free research studies either!

The cool thing about taking a look at so many different articles is that it tends to have a very holistic analysis. This study was able to find all kinds of things that lead to better emotional health later in life.

A major benefit of these studies that look at health later in life is that they tell us what we need to be doing now to maintain good health for later. You will not be the same age forever, after all!

In Conclusion

Even though there is a ton of information locked behind the pay barrier associated with research, we still have access to a whole host of resources. It is encouraging to know how much we can learn if we know where to look.

Do you have any go-to emotional health articles that have inspired you or helped you to learn? Please share your favorites in the comments below so that we can all learn together!