Humans need relationship. Though popular belief seems to suggest food and water are most basic needs, I disagree. I believe it is relationship that is the most basic requirement of our very existence, not food and water. Attachment or love could be different words for the same thing here.
As humans our entire universe takes place in our perception. There is a one primordial consciousness existing out of space and time and containing all potential experience from anywhere and any time available all the time to everyone. This emerges and appears in our perception as many to us through consensus cultural language that allows for a sense of boundary between and thereby creation of me and you, mother and child. A basic requirement of humans is a story of our relationships. It takes the sting of loneliness out of the ground level of being one consciousness. The very solidity of ground to walk upon requires its construction in our perceptions, our stories.
Humans need to feel belonging. We need a role or part to play in the interrelationship that weaves the very fabric of the consensus perceptions. We need a distraction from the truth of ground of being by living in relationship to the projected others in our perception. We create this by coming at the story from different human people perspectives creating consensus and writing and rewriting a story of relationship. Maintaining “mental health” requires maintaining consensus relationships with others. It requires a participation in some consensus perceptions.