It’s possible for people with a mental illness to have as good wellbeing as those who are deemed “mentally healthy”. These were among the findings of a new study, published on Thursday in Frontiers in Psychiatry . The researchers also validated an effective measure of mental wellbeing in adolescents.
Early in her research career, Associate Professor Justine Gatt, lead author of the study, focused on understanding anxiety and depression. She started to wonder why some people coped better with life’s adversities. Mental wellbeing and mental health are not one and the same, but two separate spectrums.
Credit: Getty Images However, there was little research being done in the area. People who visit a GP are assessed for psychological distress and, if they reach a certain threshold, are referred on. For everyone else, she says, “There’s this assumption that if you don’t have a diagnosed illness you’re doing well.
” But mental health and mental wellbeing are not the same, and the misconception that they are limits the potential for all of us to have better lives. “It’s assumed that mental health is this single spectrum. So you’ve got illness on one side and wellness on the other when really it’s two,” says Gatt, the director of Neuroscience Research Australia’s Centre for Wellbeing, Resilience and Recovery, and UNSW Psychology.
We can have high or low symptoms on the mental health spectrum, displaying as the negative symptoms associated with illnesses, l.
