Mental Health

Mental health was once defined as the psychological state that exists in the absence of mental illness. Contemporary social scientific thought, however, has abandoned the view that mental health and mental illness are antithetical to one another. Now, lack of mental illness no longer simply implies the presence of mental health, just as lack of mental health no longer suggests the presence of mental illness. Thus, the term mental health refers to a social psychological state greater than the mere absence of mental illness. Moreover, some scholars suggest that mental health can be present in individuals diagnosed with mental illness, a position that lends greater support to the view that mental health and mental illness ought not to be treated as oppositional categories.

Social scientists believe that mental health exists on a continuum, with optimal mental health occupying one pole of the continuum, poor mental health occupying the other. According to this model, an individual's location on the continuum is subject to change over time and is influenced by some combination of social, psychological, and biological factors. In advocating this model, many practitioners of social work, sociology, and psychology reject definitions of mental health that posit it as a discrete state of being. The continuous model of mental health, however, is at times inconsistent with the definitions articulated within the medical community.

In the field of diagnostic psychiatry, in particular, many experts understand mental health as existing in a dichotomous relationship with mental illness. According to this view, the relationship between mental illness and mental health is not fluid, but discrete—one finds oneself in possession of either one or the other. The dichotomization of the concepts of mental health and mental illness occurs through the application of standardized diagnostic criteria intended to positively identify the presence of mental illness. In this sense, by demarcating cut-off points, mental health becomes bounded from mental illness and, perhaps as an unintended consequence, regarded as falling outside the purview of the research programs of psychiatry.

A systematic study of mental health has yet to emerge within the social sciences. However, even if a movement were to form around the concept, mental health most likely would continue to elude precise [Page 579]definition. Two interrelated factors contribute to the inherent vagueness of the term. First, the concept as such represents a subjective state of being, varying across individuals and groups. Second, the realization of mental health rests upon culturally and temporally specific definitions of what exactly constitutes normal emotions and behaviors. In other words, the meaning attached to interpretations of mental health, and indeed to the very definition of the term normal, is necessarily rooted in cultural value judgments. As a result, even well-intended efforts to develop a universal definition of mental health are unlikely to meet with success.

Despite these issues, efforts to lend definitional clarity to the term have been made. The psychologist and philosopher Williams James, for instance, understood mental health as the achievement of happiness, a state of being largely informed by the possession of a positive outlook on life. Abraham Maslow foregrounded the concept of self-actualization in his understanding of mental well-being, arguing that once individuals meet their basic needs they may ascend to a state of self-actualization—or a state in which one is capable of making the most of his or her unique abilities. Existential psychologists have suggested that mental health rests upon discovery of the meaning of life. Positive psychologists have emphasized the relationship between human happiness and the presence of an optimistic outlook on life. In conceptualizing human happiness, positive psychology underscores a number of virtues and strengths, including wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Access to these characteristics influences one's capacity to achieve happiness, which in turn affects his or her level of mental health.

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