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Contents
- Abstract
- Stuck in the Past: The Meanings of Health
- Enter Mental Illness: A Global, Chronic, and Prevalent Burden
- Mental Health: Identifying What People Say They Have Wanted All Along
- Mental Health: It Is More Than the Absence of Mental Illness
- Flourishing Is Good for People and Society
- Complete Mental Health: How Much Is Out There?
- Epidemiology of Complete Mental Health: Who Has It?
- Discussion
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Abstract
This article summarizes the conception and diagnosis of the mental health continuum, the findings supporting the two continua model of mental health and illness, and the benefits of flourishing to individuals and society. Completely mentally healthy adults—individuals free of a 12-month mental disorder and flourishing—reported the fewest missed days of work, the fewest half-day or greater work cutbacks, the healthiest psychosocial functioning (i.e., low helplessness, clear goals in life, high resilience, and high intimacy), the lowest risk of cardiovascular disease, the lowest number of chronic physical diseases with age, the fewest health limitations of activities of daily living, and lower health care utilization. However, the prevalence of flourishing is barely 20% in the adult population, indicating the need for a national program on mental health promotion to complement ongoing efforts to prevent and treat mental illness. Findings reveal a Black advantage in mental health as flourishing and no gender disparity in flourishing among Whites.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) recently declared cure therapeutics as a goal of its portfolio of research (Insel & Scolnick, 2006). The assumption is that by reducing the number of cases of mental illness, either by preventing those at risk or by successfully treating more cases of mental illness, the American population will be mentally healthier. This is truly an assumption, because it rests on one of the most simple and inexplicably untested empirical hypotheses: The absence of mental illness is the presence of mental health. Put in psychometric terminology, the success of the current approach to mental health hinges on the hypothesis that measures of mental illness and measures of mental health belong to a single, bipolar latent continuum.
There is mounting empirical evidence that the paradigm of mental...