Mental Health Continuum

1.0 Introduction: What is Mental Health?

Mental health is a state of wellbeing in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully and is able to make a contribution to his or her own community. (World Health Organisation) Mental health is more than the nonappearance of mental sick wellbeing, yet is something that everyone encounters over their lifetime.

Mental health incorporates our enthusiastic, mental, and social prosperity. It influences how we think, feel, and act. It likewise decides how we handle push, identify with others, and settle on decisions. Mental health is essential at each phase of life, from youth and immaturity through adulthood. Through

This makes every one of us in danger of building up a mental health issue whenever during our lives. The most imperative thing to acknowledge about mental health issues is that the dominant part of individuals who encounter them do recoup or figure out how to deal with their psychological well-being issue and still lead important and satisfied lives.

Understanding the mental health continuum

At the green end of the continuum, people are well; showing resilience and high levels of wellbeing. Moving into the yellow area, people may start to have difficulty coping. In the orange area, people have more difficulty coping and symptoms may increase in severity and frequency. At the red end of the continuum, people are likely to be experiencing severe symptoms and may be at risk of self-harm or

Critics say large multinational pharmaceutical firms profit from expansion of the market for psychiatric drugs. Therefore any reduction of stigma leads to new customers. In response, some expert patients and psychiatrists argue the term ‘mental health’ is biased toward biomedicine and drug treatment. They prefer ‘mental distress’ instead.

There are good reasons to avoid outdated and stigmatised words such as ‘madness’. However, avoiding such terms in a historical account ignores the ways language changes. Labels also shape the experience of illness. ‘Madness’, ‘lunacy’ and ‘insanity’ were accepted medical usage even into the early 1900s. They were gradually displaced by ‘mental illnesses, a term which first appeared in the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.

Other diagnostic terms such as hysteria, nervous breakdown, schizophrenia and depression slipped back and forth between medical and popular use till nowadays in medical aspect. This again expresses the lesson that mental health and illness are not just in medicine’s domain. To completely avoid stigmatising terms would obscure this important