The problem with the dual continua model in policy and practioce

The dual continua model of mental health was really officially
recognised in the UK government's New Horizons mental health strategy.
Mind were instrumental in making this happen.

It is usually the psychpathology continuum which dominates national
policy. It's only in recent decades the distress continuum and model has
got recognition.

This is a small victory but there is a long way to go. The biggest
problem is the dearth of research on distress and solutions to distress.

All the science of depression is about psychopathology. Subjective
unwellness is usually why people do to the doctor if they recognise
depression or misery. doctors only know how to treat a clinical
syndrome. Their method is the operational diagnosis using the cluster of
symptoms approach. 5 out of 9 symptoms. This method doesn't primary look
for emotional distress or subjective unwellness. It is designed to be an
objective tool used by a clinician to judge whether the person has a
biomedical syndrome which presents with a pattern of symptoms.

None of the research into treatments - certainly none of the stuff which
gets used at national level - is about treatments which work on the
premise of the emotional distress model of mental health. The
psychopathological definition and concept of depression is not the same
as the medicalisation of human misery.

Conceptually the emotional distress model is closer aligned with the
distress model rather than the psychopathological model. i think the
public and some mental health professionals do perceived clinical
depression as the medicalisation of misery.

They'd be wrong. human misery is far more complex. As yet there is
little sciecen which understands it and art or music, perhaps,
understand it more.