The 4R Model of Mood and Emotion for Sustainable Mental Health in Organisational Settings

Organisations are aware of the need to maintain the mental health of their employees. People’s capacity to recognise and manage their moods and emotions is critical to sustainable mental health, performance, and quality of life, while failure to do so can result in underperformance, disengagement, and in some cases, mental illness. Employees of organisations that provide an appropriate strategy and support are likely to experience sustained psychological and mental health benefits. In this paper, we synthesise previous research into a theoretical framework distinguishing mood from emotion via both top-down (cognitive) and bottom-up (biological) factors. We propose a 4R model to help individuals R ecognise a mood as distinct from an emotion, or vice-versa, and respond in one of three ways; R estore, R esolve, or R egulate. The model posits mood as an interoceptive signal of internal biological homeostasis, and emotion as a signal of external, often social, events that disrupt homeostasis; mood and emotion serve as internal and external bio-affective feedback loops, respectively. We propose that mood is modified positively by the restoration of homeostasis, whereas emotion is modified positively by behavioural resolution of the emotion-eliciting event. The 4R model is low-cost, preventative, and can be applied peer-to-peer in organisations without expert supervision.