Your Mental Health Jam Jar

This is the mental health jam jar model (it’s based on the stress- diathesis model if you want to look up the theory) and it goes something like this:

We all have a mental health jam jar and it has limited capacity. To start it is filled with your vulnerabilities. In the original  model this was genetics or biological factors, but we prefer to think a bit wider and include childhood trauma, long term early stress, cognitive abilities and sensitivity to stress amongst other things. This will fill our jar to a certain level.

The life throws stuff at us and this is the raspberries in our jar- the stressors that come our way. There will be different amounts of raspberries at different  times in our lives.

If the combination of strawberries and raspberries fills our jar then it overflows and this leads to poor mental health. 

However there’s things we can do to help our mental health. Firstly, sometimes (but not always) we can control the amount of raspberries coming into our jar.

We can also increase the size of our jar with our coping strategies which help  reduce stress, such as supportive communities, talking through stressors, etc.

We can’t always stop the  jar flowing over, but we take steps to notice what is happening and can often help it. 

This model may help you to conceptualise your mental health, but not everyone identifies with every model. 

What we like about it is it recognises the systemic and contextual factors which impact on our mental health. it also recognises the individual differences contributing to mental health while recognising the commonality of mental health. Finally we see it as a hopeful model as it shows that there are things we can do to support our mental health….Although sometimes  despite our best efforts life may throw more raspberries at us then our jars can hold. 

We're greatful to @thepsychologymum for this brilliant discription and info graphic, helping making mental health easier to understand.