That's right.
Here's the mental health continuum. This is really the highlight of the road to mental readiness where it's an introduction of a new continuum model that really breaks down what is healthy, what is reacting, what is injured and what is ill. The important things to look at on this slide are colours: green, you're good to go; yellow, you're reacting. The self-limiting distress; it's something you can look after yourself. Then if you move to the right of the continuum, you're looking at orange and then red. In the orange, it's more severe functional impairment and when you get to the red, it's a diagnosable illness.
That being said, I often in the presentation compare it to a physical illness, which is that light bulb moment where if one of you were to twist your ankle, is it common and self-limiting distress if you twist your ankle? Can you look after it yourself? Absolutely. Would you be reacting to something that you've done to your body? Yes. It's the same thing with mental health. You can have more stress in a week or two weeks and that could put you in the reacting stage. When you go out and you sprain your ankle, maybe it's a more severe functional impairment. Maybe you need to see your doctor, go to physio and get some treatment, see an occupational therapist to help you get back to the healthy stage. When you get to ill, that's a break. It could be a shattered leg or knee. Is that going to take more treatment and more professional help to get you back into the green? Absolutely. Can you get back to the green if you've shattered a knee cap? Yes, you can. You can also get back to being healthy after being diagnosed with a mental illness.
The important factor here is it moves from good to poor mental health along a gradient. It emphasizes the possibility to back and forth along the continuum, and eliminates the need for stigmatizing labels and non-professional diagnosis. I often call it Dr. Google, where behind the scenes we're checking out on Google that we have this and that. I laugh because as soon as I call my in-laws and say that my son has a cold, they think that he has to be hospitalized and that he has pneumonia. There is an extreme. What this continuum model does for mental illness is it takes away the stigmatizing labels. It also takes away all the Dr. Googles in the world because you can actually see for yourself where you are on that continuum.
Last, each phase outlines signs and indicators for self-assessment.
Mr. Arseneault, you asked what the warning signs or indicators were. We have divided this topic into sections.
First of all, there's the change in mood.
When we look at change of mood, you're going to see a fluctuation intensity in severity and a decrease in productivity. Essentially when you move from the right to the left of the continuum, you're in a normal mood when you're in the green. You can become irritable or impatient and that can disappear and you can go back to the green, or you're angry and anxious because of something that's more stressful and you can move back to the green. You don't necessarily go directly to the red. Some people do, and in that case you'll see them easily enraged. You'll see excessive panic. You'll see depressed mood and even a numbness where they feel nothing.
We're looking at the second piece of the signs and symptoms and that's often changes in thinking and attitudes. When we look at thinking, that's more of an internal thing. What are our thoughts? Are they positive or are they negative? What's going on in ourselves when we're looking at our partner who we're working with and we're thinking, “Oh my God, do I have to work with this guy again”, when really on other days everything is fine. Here we look at thinking as internal and attitudes as external.
Is there anybody here who's been sarcastic or is sarcastic, who uses that as a normal kind of humour? Nobody. That doesn't happen.
Then I'm going to ask you, have you ever been sarcastic with an edge and then thought that maybe you shouldn't have said what you said?