Mental Health and Mental Illness—Is it all or nothing?

The traditional view of mental health is that we are healthy or sick, with no signs or symptoms between the two.  We are going to look at mental health and the continuum from mental health to mental illness in a different light. It is not an “all or nothing”.  Same as physical health, there are warning signs to alert us that it is time to take a step back, pay attention and try to understand what we are feeling or experiencing, and find ways to get right back to our healthy state. 

 

Let’s take the example of a baby with a fever. The fever is a warning sign that you need to pay attention to.  Before the baby had a fever, he or she was perfectly healthy, then all of a sudden the baby is sick with a fever. Would you ignore the fever? Not really, you would, perhaps give Tylenol. If the fever didn’t go away, would you then ignore it? Again, you would probably call the doctor or go to emergency department, the doctor might give antibiotics. You instinctively know that the baby needs help, and usually the earlier the treatment, the earlier the recovery.

 

Mental Health and Mental Illness do not have the same meaning. So what are some of the warning signs of mental illness? To keep it simple, we will use the model developed by the Department of National Defense and the US Marine Corps. They describe how signs and symptoms in the following categories—1) Mood, 2) Attitude and Performance, 3) Sleep and Physical Health, 4) Social Activity, 5) Substance Use, Gambling and Other Risk-taking Behaviours—change as we progress from Mentally Healthy to Mental Ill. The continuum begins with “Mental Health”, moves through “Distress”, “Mental Health Problems, and last to “Mental Illness”. So as you can see, there are warning signs one can pay attention to before becoming clinically ill. Also as important, even to the far right of the continuum, one can go back to the healthy state. Over the next few blogs, we will look at how the changes occur in each category. Let’s begin with the “Mood” category.

 

HEALTHY

Normal mood ups and downs
Calm
Take things in stride

 

MENTAL DISTRESS

Irritable/Impatient
Nervous
Sad/Tearful

 

MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEM

Angry
Anxious
Hopelessness/ More persistent sadness

 

ILL

Easily enraged
aggressive
Excessive anxiety/panic
Depressed mood/Suicidal                                                                    
 

Once we have completed describing the changes through the continuum in each category, we will look at helpful strategies to bring us back to good health.