Tuesday, March 5, 2024

The Mental Health Continuum

Each of us in our own unique way contributes to supporting the beautiful strangeness of people

By Jon Heinen, Representative/Prairies Member Education Coordinator

I find myself singing the Door’s song “People Are Strange” from time to time. Usually, it’s just the first few lines:

People are strange

When you’re a stranger

Faces look ugly

When you’re alone

People are, indeed, very strange. I want to clarify that this is not a negative statement. I am also very strange! It’s part of what I find beautiful about human beings.

We are strange, unique, complicated, interesting, sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful entities on this earth. We also feel feelings—sometimes massive feelings—which on one side can make life hard but on the other side is also what makes life absolutely amazing.

I’m heavily involved in the sports community, and the strangeness of human beings is often found in sports. Parents get super involved in their kid’s sport, feeling anger, anxiety, joy, stress, exhilaration over watching their kids play. Kids cry, laugh, complain, stress out, jump up and down with jubilation over what happens on the court or ice, or wherever.

What an amazing spectacle of human interaction! The other team is filled with friends, enemies, haters, dirty players, sportsmanlike players, and more.

I was part of a sports psychology session the other day and the facilitator presented the following diagram:

Mental Health Continuum Diagram

She explained that a common understanding of traditional psychology usually focuses on the left half of the spectrum: support for recovery and treatment and care related to mental health injuries or disabilities. This is probably what we think of when we hear the word psychology. Someone has a problem, so they see a psychologist.

The prevention section is where we find mental health education and initiatives like CLAC’s Mental Health First Aid course, which is offered through CLAC Training at member centres across the country. This is where psychology is focused on educating to support everyday mental health issues.

The promotion section is what I find to be the most fascinating. The facilitator—a psychologist herself—described promotion as “positive experience” in sport.

In the sport psychology session, she focused on how as coaches we could set up the conditions of sport to ensure it’s a positive experience for everyone involved.

I can’t help but think about how this pertains to the work we do at CLAC, which I have often described as incredibly unique. As a representative, we are positioned to help working people in their workplaces.

This is kind of cool because the vast majority of people go to work. Work is a significant part of nearly everybody’s everyday life!

As I get older, I am realizing that my personal motivation—what gets me going—is helping people experience life positively. The incredibly strange and fascinating people in this world deserve a positive experience, and I love to be part of whatever helps them achieve that goal.

To combine the mental health continuum with the work we do at CLAC, I think traditional unions are often focused on the first three sections: support for recovery, treatment and care, and prevention. Unions find themselves reacting to broken situations, injustice, turmoil in the workplace, individual crises, and more.

I enjoy this part of the work at CLAC because it’s a form of helping people. Something went wrong? I can help!

What makes my experience at CLAC unique, however, is that while we do the first three sections, we are also highly motivated on the promotion of a positive work experience. The ultimate goal is to create a workplace that is a positive, rewarding, and fulfilling work experience for all.

Interesting. People are strange, unique, complicated, lovely, amazing. They sometimes need support for recovery, treatment and care, and prevention.

We are fortunate at CLAC to not only be in the position to offer all those things, but also to focus on the promotion of well-being in workplaces. Workplaces that are positive, healthy, structured, forward thinking, accountable but supportive, promoting justice, balancing needs, the list goes on.

When I reflect on all these things, I can’t help but feel awe and wonder for how each of us contributes in our own unique ways to a section (or more) of this mental health continuum and to supporting the beautiful strangeness of people along the way.

The Mental Health Continuum

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