Mental Health Continuum
Balancing the Medicine Wheel
“Health is a balance of the spiritual, emotional, physical and intellectual aspects of a child, youth, adult, or Elder who live as individuals, families, communities and nations within various cultural, social, economic and political environments.”
— Dr. Judith Bartlett
Holistic Wellness and Mental Health
Wellness is being healthy in body, mind, emotion, and spirit. The benefits to a holistically well lifestyle include more energy, resilience, restful sleep; less stress, less lost time due to illness; and better mental health.
Mental health is a component of wellness allowing an individual to be cognizant of their own strengths, deal with life stress adequately, live, study, and work well, and contribute to their community. Every one of us has mental health.
Mental health and mental illness can co-exist and people with mental illness can still live very fulfilling lives and excel in post-secondary studies and the workforce.
Mental health continuums provide recognizable behaviours, emotions, thoughts, learning, and social relationships to help us pay more attention to our own common patterns and determine how mentally healthy or ill we are. We can also use the continuum as a reference when we feel that people close to us — family members, friends, classmates, colleagues — may be struggling.
