Episode 9 - Mental Health Vs Mental Illness

We draw a clear line between mental health and mental illness, showing how everyday distress differs from diagnosable conditions and why that distinction matters. Personal examples, practical language, and compassion cut through stigma while encouraging smarter support and recovery.

• what mental health means and how it fluctuates
• common stress responses like grief, burnout and exhaustion
• mental illness as diagnosable, impairing conditions
• how episodes can be temporary and fully resolve
• triggers including prolonged stress, sleep loss and hormones
• why social media blurs definitions
• the two umbrellas framework for clarity
• stigma, language and seeking the right help
• practical ways to reduce stress and support recovery

We'd appreciate the comments
If you or someone you know could benefit from hearing our podcast, please follow and share
Because everyone's breaking these days, and silence can kill

Transcript

Setting The Stakes: Stress And Silence

Caz 0:00

Stress is the biggest killer in the world.

D 0:03

Welcome to DStress with D and Caz. Both have crowning achievements for not ending in a lives. So we're talking about mental health.

Caz 0:14

Too many of us are suffering silently. So go grab yourself a cup.

Defining Mental Health Clearly

D 0:20

And let's get real and raw because you are worth so much more. Welcome to another DStress episode. I'm D. And I'm Caz. We want to clear something up that isn't being answered clearly anywhere anymore. And that is what is the difference between mental health and mental illness? Because, before you say anything, Caz, I wasn't shocked, horror shocked, but because we've not had this conversation yet, I was surprised that you didn't realise there was a difference between the two things, and it just hits home just how much there is a problem with people not understanding this stuff.

Caz 1:05

Absolutely. I mean, mental health is almost thrown around a bit like trauma, it's a flip word now, isn't it? Mental health is something everyone has all of the time. Yeah.

D 1:18

Simple, like physical health. We've got to have it.

Caz 1:21

That's it.

D 1:23

That's it. Whereas mental illness is something some people experience some of the time. They are not the same thing and they are not interchangeable, as and when people decide they want to do that. It's just not possible to do that. And it's so confusing. It's a big problem nowadays, Caz.

Caz 1:43

I mean, the fact that we're even having to cover this tells us something about how confusing this issue really is now between mental health and mental illness.

D 1:55

Mental health is something that every single one of us is experiencing all the time, just like physical health. Mental health describes how, with all the stuff that we're about, we think, we cope, how we regulate our emotions, and how we respond to stress and life in general. It's a very normal part of life. And your mental health can either be strong, stretched, depleted, overwhelmed without you ever being mentally ill because the stress issue, as we are discussing, is everywhere all the time for all people.

Caz 2:32

Are you talking about, you know, things like burnout, um, grief, you know, them type of like sadness, emotional exhaustion?

D 2:41

Exactly that. They are mental health issues, they are not mental illnesses. So anything to do with temporary responses over reactions of the stress, overwhelm of the stress response can cause that fear, sadness, emotional exhaustion, etc.

Caz 2:56

Which every very normal human being person has and will have in their lifetime.

D 3:03

All perfectly natural responses to ordinary, everyday life for every single person. That's what mental health is all about.

Caz 3:12

Because all of us, you know, we're gonna go through grief, we're gonna lose people in our life. That's part of the way.

D 3:18

Well, that's where our CCTs come in. You know, we're life is full of changes, challenges, and threats. And that's why we have the stress system doing the job that it does. And that's all very much part of what mental health's about. It's keeping the balance so that our it's a bit like you know, it's physical health. You have to eat a nice, healthy diet, exercise, you know, look after what you do with your body. That's to maintain a good degree of physical health. Well, that's the sort of thing we're talking about with mental health. So, mental illness is completely different because it refers to things that are diagnosable, things that are clinical conditions, things that meet medical and psychological criteria that are significantly impairing daily function for lots of people. And, you know, these clinical conditions often require specialists to step in and help people manage their conditions with care and long-term support, like major depressive disorders, um, eating disorders, and severe anxiety disorders. We talk about depression and anxiety as part and parcel of the overwhelm of stress and red stuff, but we're not talking about the major depressive and the severe anxiety disorders. However, we've both had both of those at some points in our lives. Which we've recovered from. Which we've recovered from, and this is the conversation we're having today. It's like there's no overlap in terms of what they actually are, but people can have experiences that could be classed as, but if they have never had the diagnosis, then it's a bit of a catch-22 as to who would say it was or wasn't. But I think we know as individuals how severe our depression was at times or our anxiety has been. But either or this is not a conversation about us, this is a conversation just defining the difference between mental health and mental illness.

Caz 5:20

I know that being born in the 70s and growing up in the 80s and 90s, you know, mental health was never mentioned, then words or mental illness. And I actually think it's it's nicer now to have to explain it and call it mental illness, because when we were growing up and the words that we used isn't very nice.

D 5:40

Did you say nicer to say it's mental illness?

Caz 5:43

I think the the it's a nicer way to explain um with people that have um mental illnesses, actually using the word mental illness, because when I was growing up in the 70s, eighties, and nineties, we didn't have that word as mental illness. The words that were used, which you know, I apologize to anybody who finds this offensive, but this is how we was brought up with see where you're going now? Because I'm thinking, okay, I'm not sure, but I understand that now. You know, it was it was you were mad, you were nuts, crazy, schizo, bonkers, yeah, and very offensive words.

D 6:20

So mental illness, I think, is you know So people experiencing mental illness, what you're saying is a much kinder term and phrase to to describe them as opposed to how it used to be in the language that was used. Yeah. But I completely agree because uh everyone in their childhoods of my age would be always aware of you know the local crazy person doing whatever they were doing. We we we spoke about tramps earlier, didn't we? It's like you don't see the kind of tramps that were around back in those days.

Language, Stigma, And Changing Terms

Caz 6:49

Not that they had mental illness generally, but where you know we've just been saying about explaining about the words about crazy, and it's it's better now to be, you know, said it's mental illness. But over the years, mental health and mental illness have kind of been sort of it's got so confusing that if you have stress, people, you know, it's it's your mental health, you have a bit of stress, but people can automatically think, oh, you know, there's something really wrong with that person. Um, they've got a mental illness, which isn't the case. Exactly.

D 7:24

So you can have poor mental health without mental illness, and you can actually live with a mental illness while maintaining good mental health. It's all about understanding the right understanding, the right tools, and the right support, of course. Uh, we don't confuse physical health with physical illness, do we? No. When you talk about someone's physical health, you don't think, oh, that means they've got a physical illness. But that's exactly what we are doing when it comes to mental health mental illness. Absolutely. And that's the that's the clear distinction there. So very confusing. A few decades ago, this distinction was so much clearer because of the fact that there wasn't so much social media, so many people talking about mental health in their own way, putting their own slot on it, and making it make sense to others like them, but not necessarily because of not being professional, being able to distinguish the difference between the two, it just gets lost, and you know, it's just a very, very difficult thing to appreciate that emotional distress and stress um is is a recognized part of being a human being, whereas mental illness was a hundred percent recognised all them years ago as a clinical issue, it isn't now. Somewhere along the way, those lines got blurred because of social media, like I say, and it's definitely definitely not helped the issue.

Caz 8:50

But all them years ago, people didn't really get the support they they needed for mental health, you'd just get locked up. Exactly.

D 8:59

So, what we label as normal human distress, uh, when we label normal human distress as illness, is people start to believe they're broken for feeling human. And that's the issue that we've got with the DStress Podcast is actually telling people that when they have mental health issues, that they're not broken, you know. 90% of what people who have excess stress in their bodies are dealing with is mental health, not mental illness. Yeah, you know, and at the same time, those living with serious mental illnesses sometimes aren't taken as seriously as they should be because they're being put into a category that doesn't need as much help as they actually need.

Caz 9:44

So, what you're saying basically, D, is that people some people that actually do have a mental illness, it's going the other way, and they're just saying they have mental health problems when it's actually a mental illness and they need much more support than they are either aware of. They're all put under the same umbrella, everything's under mental health.

D 10:03

Well, the words mental health are encompassing like an umbrella, as you say, much bigger issues when it comes to mental illness than we've not well than we've really given it credit for or or enough time to talk about.

Caz 10:17

So, really, we need two separate kind of umbrellas, one for mental health, which we all have, and one for mental illness.

Why The Lines Got Blurred Online

D 10:26

Yes. However, people with mental health can have pouts of mental illness, due to their circumstances, and vice versa. So mental health is a shared human experience, we all have it, whereas mental illness is a clinical condition, they are related, but they're absolutely not the same thing. But that's what not necessarily we are going to clear up, but what the medical profession and the therapists and all the people out there that are dealing with mental health as it were, need to start defining and creating a distinction between the two because too many people put them in the same category still.

Caz 11:10

And they're getting they're getting confused either way. Yeah.

D 11:14

Yeah.

Caz 11:15

So what mental health actually means is it's the overall state of your psychological and emotional functioning, which includes things like, and these are just bullet points, guys, how you cope with stress, how you regulate emotions, how you think, reason and make decisions, how you relate to others, your sense of meaning and identity, and your resilience. Which actually happened to myself and today. So mental health exists on a spectrum, just like physical health. So you can have good mental health, poor mental health, fluctuating mental health, or temporarily compromised mental health. So you can have poor mental health without having a mental illness. For example, grief after bereavement, burnout from chronic stress, anxiety during major life changes, low mood after loss, trauma, or even exhaustion. These are human responses, they're not diseases. Thanks, Caz.

D 12:30

That's what mental health means.

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D 13:02

And now we're gonna talk about, I'm going to discuss what mental illness actually means. Um, mental illness refers to clinically recognised disorders that involve persistent patterns of symptoms, cause significant impairment in functioning, and often require clinical intervention. And examples of that include major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, OCD, which is obsessive compulsive disorder, and eating disorders.

Caz 13:43

I wish I had that.

D 13:45

Oh mustn't say for you. Isn't that the one we're clean? Yeah. I've got to leave that in because oh bless her. She's got a very clean house, by the way. We don't want to be quiet while I'm talking. Sorry. Um I don't apologise. Eating disorders, severe anxiety disorders. Uh therefore mental illnesses, not just stress, not just sadness, not just being overwhelmed or having a bad patch. It's a medical and psychological condition often involving neurobiological factors, big word, genetic vulnerability, trauma exposure, and long-term dysregulation.

Caz 14:33

So D, someone can have temporary mental illness and then fully recover like we did.

The Two Umbrellas Framework

D 14:40

Yeah, exactly. A person like us, people like us can experience symptoms that meet what's known as the diagnostic criteria for a mental illness for a limited period, like we did, and then return to their usual level of mental health with no ongoing disorder. This doesn't mean they never had a mental illness, it means the condition was episodic, they call it, reactive because of something that happened, or situational, as in our cases, rather than a chronic mental illness situation or condition. Some mental illnesses are episodes that can be stress-induced or psychological states where the brain is reacting to overload, not an underlying pathology. That's us all over, and many others out there who have probably got a file of worrying about when I behave like that, does that mean I've got a mental illness? Does that mean I should be getting help? Does that mean there's something wrong with me? No, not necessarily. It was a temporary episodic experience.

Caz 15:54

So when I say um, you know, in the past I've struggled um with my mental health, that's okay to say.

D 16:03

Yes, because mental health is you struggling with excess levels of what we call red stuff, stress hormones in your body, which is as it says there, you know, stress can actually bring on mental illness. But some of the things that we're talking about, most of the things, sorry, that we're exp we have experienced is not mental illness, but they can go over that fence or over that barrier temporarily temporarily sometimes. For example, when you had your pseudo-seizures and all the things that were wrong with you, um, that can instigate uh a period, an episode. I'm not saying that yours was specifically there, but something like that can bring on an episode of mental illness. So you went into a state of you know, deep, deep, deep depression, which I wouldn't say you didn't get depressed, but not enough for you to be diagnosed with depressive disorder. So, you know, it's it's a very interesting subject, but at the same time, the the line isn't that fine between mental health and mental illness, but it's definitely a line that needs to be understood.

Caz 17:12

Well, you're definitely explaining it to us and making it much clearer. So thank you.

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D 17:16

I hope so. The triggers for these episodes that can be stress-induced are things like severe or prolonged stress, tick, tick for you and me, sleep deprivation, tick, for you and me, grief, tick, although I think I still don't think I've grieved properly after my experience for obvious reasons that I was already in a terrible state, and that that itself, you know, looking back at that, did I have postpartum psychosis and not just postnatal depression? Who will ever be able to explain or know or diagnose that if that was the case? But it's something worth considering. I'm thinking if it happened to you today, in in this time of life, then you would have got a diagnosis, but all them years ago, back then my personal situation was hampered by the fact that my husband died, and everything was put down to grief, and so nothing else was taken into consideration once I actually really started making attempts to get some help. You know, once you've said your husband's died and you just had a baby, that the first thing they're going to talk about is grief. Yeah. That's your problem. However, um, another reason for um periodic stress-induced mental illness can be not periodic, sorry, temporary, uh, hormonal changes. Think about the menopause, for example. That's really quite a big thing today for women. Um, illness in general. Here we go, that's you. Not only did Caz have the type 1 diabetes after her major trauma, she spent five months in a hospital in a very compromised situation, which would have, I believe, induced some of the what could have been classed as mental illness behaviours in you at the time with your depression. Yeah. Um medical reactions again, your pseudo-seizures were very much part of having too much steroids in your system, and your body couldn't handle those. It really has been um quite a lot for both of us. You know, we've got a lot of examples where this stuff can happen, and nervous system dysregulation, which is the trauma stuff, you know, which we both have experience of, which again is difficult to describe in for in a very short conversation that we're having now. So in these cases, the brain state is altered temporarily, but once regulation returns, so does mental health. That balance, that state of homeostasis, which is what the stress system is looking for, which is what we talk about. So here are some really good examples which are very common for mental illness episodes due to all of the things that we've just discussed.

Caz 20:10

So here's an example. A parent under prolonged stress can develop panic attacks, insomnia, or depressive symptoms, which meets criteria for an anxiety or depressive disorder. However, once the stress resolves and the nervous system stabilizes, the symptoms can fully subside, allowing the parent a full recovery. Someone can experience short-term paranoia or dissociation following trauma, illness or sleep deprivation, which can be diagnosed as an acute or brief disorder that returns to full normal health. Another example is grief-related depression. This can be clinically identical to major depression at its peak, and again can resolve as a person readjusts from the loss.

What Mental Illness Means Clinically

D 21:07

So, one of the biggest misunderstandings is the idea that once somebody experiences mental illness symptoms, they're permanently mentally ill. That's simply not true. A person can experience a temporary period of symptoms that fully meet diagnostic criteria, depression, anxiety, even psychosis are examples, and then return completely to their previous level of mental health. These are often episodes, not identities, they are states, not traits. And when we fail to make that distinction, we do real harm. Mental health exists on a continuum, just like physical health. It can dip, recover, and stabilize again. A broken leg doesn't mean a broken body forever, and neither does a breakdown mean a Broken mind forever. Either way, everyone's mental health, with or without mental illness, can definitely benefit by recognising, reducing, and managing any unnecessary component of stress, which we call red stuff, that is inevitable and present during any acute or chronic psychological episode, which is why we are so passionate about people understanding how their mind and body communicates, how they can intervene on any thought process during an episode of temporary mental illness as well as overwhelm and overload.

Caz 22:41

I'm glad you've um explained that to us, D, because because I'm a very honest and open person, when I say, you know, in the past I have struggled with my mental health. Um my only concern is sometimes people will look at me and think that that is forever and not look at the way I've recovered and come back from this. Um you kind of kind of feel like you get a little bit stained from it's a stigma, it's a thing called stigma, isn't it?

D 23:08

Stigma, that's the correct word. That's what people have had issues with for years, which is why so many people don't say anything, why so many people won't go there because they're terrified of being labelled as having a mental illness. Yeah. Where really it's just very normal for brains and bodies to experience these temporary episodes of difficult mental health stroke illness because of the nature of what we understand the brain and body when it's overwhelmed by stress. It's a very difficult one. Is it's one of those subjects that people understandably listen to today's episode. It's a difficult one to to talk about without being totally honest that actually there's plenty of people who've had episodes probably and periods of psychosis, for example, which only lasted for a day, an hour, when they've been massively overwhelmed, or life has thrown so many CCTs at them that they uh they couldn't do anything but behave in that way because of the nature of the brain. But it doesn't mean that they've got a mental illness, it's a temporary episode, and people shouldn't have fear about discussing with medical professionals about these because they understand, they do understand that this happens and that it shouldn't be swept under the carpet. That's probably why there's so many mental health problems or people not understanding this conversation.

Temporary Episodes And Full Recovery

Caz 24:36

It's so fantastic, Dee, that you've explained this again to me and to our listeners, because it's so important. Anyone that's listening really needs to, you know, understand the difference between mental health and mental illness. So we hope this has clarified the difference for you. If you know someone who needs this clarification, then please share this episode with them.

D 25:02

We'd appreciate the comments. Yeah. Please. Thank you very much. And may I just say that we're not medical professionals, so we have referred to some research and been reading some scripts at times, but we've really had fun because we've made so many mistakes and we definitely don't want jobs as TV presenters, that is for sure. So if you have heard any mistakes, forgive us, it's not in our nature to do this sort of thing, but it's been necessary for a very important subject like this.

Caz 25:32

How many takes have we had?

D 25:34

Honestly, it's been hilarious. We have laughed so much, but thanks again for listening. It's been wonderful to have you listening and coming back week after week. We really appreciate it. Thanks very much. Bye again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Stress is everywhere, and it's winning if we stay quiet.

Caz 25:53

If you or someone you know could benefit from hearing our podcast, please follow and share.

D 25:59

Because everyone's breaking these days, and silence can kill.