Start teaching emotional literacy early to prevent mental health problems

When managing mental health, we can use the DSM framework or a "process based" framework.

What is the underlying process of the mental health challenges?

Sometimes we don’t have to commit to a DSM diagnosis of depression or anxiety to help people process their feelings and thoughts. We don’t have to wait for a full blown expression of depression or anxiety before we can take action.

We can improve our patient's mental health by helping them at anytime to "zoom out" or defuse from the thoughts and feelings that don’t matter to them or is not within their locus of control, and "zoom into" the stuff that really matters to them or is within their locus of control. This creates psychological flexibility rather than psychological rigidity.

Start early.

This is part of emotional literacy. We don’t wait for people to be illiterate before we teach them about literacy, so why wait for depression or anxiety before we teach them about emotional literacy.

Prevention is better than cure.