Preventing Mental Illness: Community Connection Matters

When we talk about mental health, our ability to flourish, we are often really talking about two different things: mental ill-health and mental illness.
Understanding the difference can be life-changing, both for you and the people you care about.
Mental ill-health, which is known as languishing within the languishing-to-flourishing continuum concept, refers to those periods when you’re struggling, feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or stuck, but still managing daily life.
Mental illness, on the other hand, involves diagnosable conditions that significantly impact your functioning.
The good news? Mental ill-health doesn’t have to become mental illness, and both exist within communities that can either support healing or inadvertently make things harder.
Since we discussed how to improve mental health in our previous post, we will now look at how to prevent mental illness.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our five positive psychology tools for free. These engaging, science-based exercises will help you effectively deal with difficult circumstances and give you the tools to improve the resilience of your clients, students, or employees.