Rethreading Madness brings back one of the professionals who cohosted this program when it was called Both Sides Now. Glen Grigg PhD has provided clinical counselling in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver for 25 years. He teaches in the Master of Counselling program at UBC and Adler University. We sat down with him to ask the question that is almost never asked or really answered: What is Mental Health? It was an interesting conversation. Even after a good conversation with Glen about mental health and what it is, it still felt like what defines mental health is vague. We can clearly identify mental health problems. We have defined what Is called abnormal psychology to the hilt most especially over the last couple decades in the DSM, described to me by professionals as a necessary tool so that doctors could bill for seeing their clients (which means every client had to have a diagnosis for them to be paid). Consequently, the DSM basically covers everything it means to be human. It is no uncommon for me to talk with folks who have various diagnosis from paranoid schizophrenia, to bipolar II, to borderline to… you name it. Given how major diagnoses can morph into something else depending on the clinician, it makes it hard to take it seriously. And yet while not clearly identifying what is mental health we clearly are able to name every human emotion as a disease.

That said Glen offered up the following definition of mental health: being able to function without becoming rigid, erratic or chaotic and that one is able to flow with social functions and is available to experience that flow.

What do you think?

music by Shari Ulrich