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Mental Health Nursing · Chapter 1

Dual-Continuum Plotter: Distress or Disorder?

Mental health and mental illness sit on two separate axes, so a person can flourish with a serious diagnosis and languish with no diagnosis at all. Pick a person, place them on both sliders, then run the three-question gate that separates ordinary distress from a disorder. Compare your placement and your judgement with the clinical reading.

1 · Choose a person

2 · Place them on both axes

LanguishingFlourishing
No diagnosisSerious illness
The two axes are independent on purpose. Treatment success is not symptom silence, and a person with no diagnosis can still be quietly disappearing.

3 · The three-question gate

The dual continuum

LANGUISHING WITH ILLNESS FLOURISHING WITH ILLNESS LANGUISHING, NO DIAGNOSIS FLOURISHING, NO DIAGNOSIS Mental health → Illness burden → RN

Your placement: the centre of the grid. Move the sliders.

Clinical reading

Choose a person to beginEach of the six people below sits in a different place on the grid. Two of them have no psychiatric diagnosis at all — and only one of those two is well.