1. Unit 4 Mental Health

2.  A person feels mentally healthy when it feels like everything is working well. You feel good about yourself, your relationships with other people, and are able to meet the demands and challenges of everyday life.  "Mental health involves finding balance in all aspects of your life: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It is the ability to enjoy life and deal with the challenges you face everyday — whether that involves making choices and decisions, adapting to and coping in difficult situations, or talking about your needs and desires." (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) (2003), Challenges and Choices (PDF), pp 11, Toronto, Ontario.)Challenges and Choices (PDF), pp 11, Toronto, Ontario.)

3. Mental Health Problems  Throughout a person's lifetime, mental health is the springboard of thinking and communication skills, learning, emotional growth, resilience, and self esteem  We may take our mental health for granted and may not notice the components of our mental well-being until we experience problems and stresses in our life. Mental health problems refer to changes in a person's ability to cope and function. These changes may occur at any age for men or women and at any time in a person's life.

4.  "Just as your life and circumstances continually change, so do your moods and thoughts and your sense of well-being. It is important to find balance in your life over time and in a range of situations. It is natural to feel off balance at times: for example, sad, worried, scared or suspicious. But these kinds of feelings may become a problem if they get in the way of your daily life over a long period." (CAMH, Challenges and Choices (PDF), pp 11)Challenges and Choices (PDF), pp 11)

5. Mental Health Problems &Illness  Mental health problems generally refer to those changes that occur over a period of time or that significantly affect the way a person copes or functions. When these changes in thinking, mood, and behaviour are associated with significant distress and impaired functioning, it may be that the person is experiencing a mental illness

6. Mental Illness  Mental illness is the term used to refer to mental health problems that are diagnosed and treated by mental health professionals. In the medical professions, they are also called "mental disorders" but this is not a term that is very comfortable to most people. This would include such problems as depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, social phobia, eating disorders, schizophrenia, and personality disorders

7.  It is important to recognize that mental wellness and mental health problems or mental illness are part of an ever changing and dynamic continuum. The following diagram illustrates one model describing the relationship between health and illness, it was developed by John Travis M.D in 1972

8.  In the 1970s, Travis developed the Illness/Wellness Continuum Model that attempts to describe the relationship between health and illness.  It is also helpful to think of the balance in our lives and in our mental health as a triangle with equal sides. The sides of the triangle represent our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. They are all connected in this triangle; balance or change in one side of the triangle affects the rest of the triangle, e.g., changes in our thinking can affect changes in our behaviour or feelings.