The Continuum of Mental Health:
Following the Mental Health Continuum Model (MSCM) we will find a great understanding. Let us work on with our understanding of the mental continuum.
Healthy: A healthy individual is “normal,” the normal functioning of people.
Reacting: A widespread and reversible distress. That happened to all of us.
Struggling or being injured: This zone can easily progress into the red zone. It needs
immediate intervention. (Talk, Ask for help, and take action-
on your betterment. Talk to a mental health professional.)
Injured: This is a severe disorder; a function that is impaired for healthy functioning in every-
aspect of daily life. A mental health professional must be involved to resolve the
problems.
Mental health issues are a very complicated and confusing subject to understand without a mental health professional's help.
Please note this: If you or your loved ones are suffering from any sort of mental health problems, talk to your doctor or your health care provider right away before or after you discuss the issues with your families, because early care is highly necessary for you if you start suffering.
Everyone on this planet faces mental health issues at one or more times in their lifetime.
Please, don’t hide or be scared to look for solutions when you face mental problems. Free yourself from mental health stigma.
Talking about Mental Health in a family: From where can we start?
First step, we must understand that mental health problems can go in both directions at any given time, so getting help must be a priority. That could be applied to all different types of mental illness or behavioral disorders; there is always a spectrum that goes from mild to severe.
A person can start in the healthy range and slip into crisis, as well as vice versa.
Even when someone is in the red or crisis zone, with proper treatment, self-care, and family or friends’ support, a person’s health could go back into the healthy zone.
I believe that we all need to start by understanding the first step, to know what mental health issues are, and how they can be easily developed into a crisis if we don’t treat them right on time.
We need to be able to identify the different stages, understand what it looks like in each zone
to help us stop the negative impacts. We all need to examine our emotions and our behaviour in everyday interactions, whether our brain is functioning without pain or not.
Always look and examine to resolve the problems, not to make ourselves or others worse than they feel.
Try to eliminate any types of toxic relationships with people you care about/with others/. Work on improving your communication styles by examining yourself to see if you are the one harming yourself or others, and ask if you get bad thoughts or emotions all the time.
Please always ask for help and seek a solution, never give up, on the improvement of your behavioural or mental issues, never lose hope in bettering your lifestyle, even if others have been telling you differently.
Work on changing your negative habits that harm you and your family before they become your fixed character. Remember, even in bad habits, there is a zone of progress, so pay attention.
Every day, try harder to stop the harmful pattern from happening.
If it’s already there and it has been happening to you or the person you care about, encourage yourself to take action to change it for the better by working with mental health workers.
What to know:
Keep in mind, a mild stress at the yellow zone (Stressed/reacting) for someone with a healthy brain or (for a person with a “typical brain”), sometimes could be used as a motivational tool. It might even help them to do better work on changing their lives.
But stress is always a bad thing in the end, it might show like it is working for a while, but it is always creating a deep psychological scar of trauma, which could present itself in the later stages of their life.
On the other hand, the yellow zone (stressed/reacting) for neurodivergent people could be a huge risk factor for mental problems because they are affected by it differently, and they also show immediate reactions to stressful situations or environments, which we can see when it affects their emotions and reactions.
So we can easily help them if we already understand their struggles. Opening up with family or friends will help to do the right thing.
Even a mild stress hurts a special needs child’s brain. It might even be a chronically damaging factor to their mental health and their future functionality.
Remember, here, my goal is to reach out and do my part, as we all do.
From my view of understanding, even in a well-developed country like Canada, so many parents have no idea about the signs or the (symptoms)of mental health problems or the behavioral disabilities in their children or themselves, for the fact that, they never get a chance to understand some of these problems how that has been an impairment on their childrens developments and in their learning process, their social interactions at home or school.
So we can see them reacting wrongly toward the struggling child or to a growing adults.
And the other equal number of Canadians’ parents I have met are intentionally trying to delay and avoid the process of special care for their children because of the fear of discrimination at school and in children’s playgrounds.
Please understand, I am not blaming or talking down a parent of any type here; I am just trying to describe that the suffering of parenthood is a universal thing, and we all have more work to do for betterments and our children by being willing to learn and understand mental health problems and its impacts in life, and the mental health stigma is everywhere.
Therefore, we all have a long way to go to bring full awareness to every family unit, even in Canada.
While raising my children in the Canadian school system and enrolling them in various activities, I have met and befriended many parents from diverse cultural backgrounds. I also lived in different parts of the world. Very different from Canadians’ parenthoods, and a few of which are still similar to Canadians.
So my experiences and study of parenthood showed me, for sure, globally, we all need to start talking about mental health issues at home, to solve the bigger behavioral issues we have in societies. Without a doubt, I believe, that is the greatest way to bring a better humanity in the future.
Action plan for all of us:
The home we are living in, we all need to talk about mental health. We must be honest. When we start an intimate relationship, if we have been diagnosed with a mental illness, we must tell our partner so that the person can help out with full information and mental health awareness when help is needed.
No need to be shamed because people can be mentally disabled at any time, it is never in one’s control, and unexpected mental health risk factors could happen to anyone without discrimination. Hiding yourself in fear while you have support around you is not important.
Let us go back into the MSCM charts and just see how that has affected us in the past. And which Zone are we in right at this moment? We should all ask this question and get our answer, then find a solution for it to live our best. Don’t be worried, help and solutions are out there in most of the world.
Being able to be honest about our struggles and organic kindness to one another in every type of relationship at home is one of the most important qualities of humanity because this quality could continue to benefit us to be applied in the community we live in, in the life we build for us and everywhere we go, or whatever we do.
Once we are willing to understand and be open to our families who share life with us, we know how to be open to the world. The result of your honesty about your mental struggle will always free your mind. It is always beneficial to one's well-being. It also helps others to follow a good example.
Love and peace to all.
Aimy Belay.
