#2 Do we need to rethink how we think about mental health?
How an unproven assumption about mental health makes us forget that wellbeing matters in its own right.
➤ What Know-How are we building?
Let’s kick off today with a video from the Be Well Co archives. In it you can meet a young Dr. Matthew Iasiello (Head of Data and Knowledge Translation at Be Well Co), who is a leading researcher on how wellbeing relates to mental illness. The video summarises the insights from a key research paper our team wrote in 2020 on the so-called ‘Dual-continua model’ of mental health.
The video introduces the evidence for the model and the way of considers mental health: a view that contradicts how much of our mental health system operates, and how many of us think about mental health in general.
Dual continua models allow us to think of measurement, interventions and policy in a completely different way by making wellbeing its own focus area, rather than simply the opposite of mental illness.
What the model asks us to do is to see our mental health more like we view our physical health, where we see the treatment of illness (for example cancer) as different but related to promotion of health (for example physical exercise).
The paper found a whopping 80+ (in 2020!) studies supporting this view of mental health, which for our team was so compelling it has majorly influenced the way we think about and design our own services.
Seeing mental wellbeing as complementary but related to experiences of mental illness allows us to think about different ‘groups’ of people, each with different needs in how to support them.
We can use scientific measures to figure out how many people belong in each group, which in our own study of 15,000+ people led to the percentages below.
🧠 Today’s know-how action 🧠
Having watched the video and seen the stats presented above, to build todays’ Be Well Know-how, we want to ask:
Do the numbers presented for each quadrant surprise you? Why did you answer the way you did?
If you had to put yourself in the quadrants, where would you be now, and where have you been across your life?
Can you identify someone in your life who represents each quadrant? How many can you get and how easy is it?
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➤ Why is this piece of Know-How important?
There is a tremendous amount of research to show that wellbeing and illness are not just opposites of one another - it is far more complex. The video introduces so called dual factor models that go into that complexity. While they are still an oversimplification that doesn’t do justice to the complex topic (we will address this in later Be Well Know-How’s), it allows you to start working with the idea to split wellbeing, just like we do in physical illness.
Some papers that underpin this Know-How are:
📄 (Article) “Mental illness and/or mental health? Investigating axioms of the complete state model of health” by Corey Keyes
The original paper by professor Corey Keyes outlining the concept of dual-factor models.
📄 (Article) “Mental Health and/or Mental Illness: A Scoping Review of the Evidence and Implications of the Dual-Continua Model of Mental Health” by Matthew Iasiello and colleagues
Our researchers believe that there is too much evidence that contradicts bipolar models. They wrote a paper on it in 2020 finding 80 papers. That’s simply too much to keep holding on to an idea
📄 (Report) “Stuck in Neutral: Languishing and its impact on Australia” By Be Well Co
➤ How can I apply this Know-How in my own professional practice?
For this Be Well Know-how, we chose to use a combination of video and data to achieve the following aims:
Develop knowledge on dual-factor models and its implications for how we think about and work with mental health
Develop knowledge on basic stats that reflect the different quadrants of the dual-factor models
Apply dual-factor models to our own life, by seeing where you and the people sit in terms of the quadrants.
Using it in practice
We think there are a bunch of ways you can use today’s Be Well Know-How’s content. For example:
👥 In group or 1:1 discussions where you explore different mental health experiences across people
🖥️ In presentations on theories of mental health or models of wellbeing or
📄 In ‘theory’ sections of general wellbeing presentations
📈 In specific presentations on dual-factor models and data on each of the quadrants
Below you can find different resources that work with the information presented in this moment, specifically:
🖼️ PPT and Canva slides, including scripts
📑 A PDF worksheet template
📝 Learning outcomes summary
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