The misconception that could change the way we look at mental health

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A new study highlights that the presence of illness does not mean an absence of wellbeing.

It’s possible for people with a mental illness to have as good a wellbeing as those who are deemed “mentally healthy”. These were among the findings of a new study, published on Thursday inEarly 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.

“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. For instance, in healthy adolescents, more than 10 per cent reported poor wellbeing. In contrast, nearly 65 per cent of participants with a psychiatric diagnosis reported moderate wellbeing, and a small percentage had high wellbeing.If a person who is diagnosed with depression or anxiety receives the right treatment and medication, they can still flourish. “They’ve still got this condition, but it’s under control,” she says. “So they can live thriving lives.

For this reason, Gatt and her team wanted to test the efficacy of a wellbeing tool they originally developed for adults in 2014.There are many lifestyle factors which can mitigate the risk of depression.“You can identify specific genes separate to anxiety and depression symptoms,” she explains. But it also means that more than 50 per cent of our wellbeing comes down to environment.

 

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