< img src="https://cdn2.psychologytoday.com/assets/styles/manual_crop_1_91_1_1528x800/public/field_blog_entry_images/mental%20health%20continuum.jpg?itok=9cPMHy_6" > A colleague and good friend of mine who is a retired teacher of pathophysiology with a longstanding interest in psychiatry and human habits made an extremely crucial point to me in our discussions about psychological health.
“When I was learning more about what constituted an unhealthy liver,” he said, “one of the most crucial pieces of understanding I had was what a healthy liver looks like to work as a comparison. Yet, in psychological health and psychiatry, generally what you have are descriptors of dysfunction but no real contrast or reference models of what constitutes mental health. Rather, there is simply an unclear claim that the existing presentation should not be ‘regular’.”
This is an excellent point. Although this has altered some recently with the emergence of favorable psychology, it remains the case that far less attention has actually been paid to clarifying what makes up mental health than psychopathology. And, for far too long, psychological health was basically specified in terms of the absence of psychopathology.
In acknowledging this point, however, it needs to likewise be acknowledged that comprehending mental health is quite difficult and complex. Consider it this way: It is much more uncomplicated to address the question of what is a healthy liver than what is a healthy individual. The latter feels (and is) a lot more value-laden and culturally bound. However that does not indicate we are paralyzed and the goal of this blog post is to assist readers believe more explicitly about what it is that makes up psychological health.
To start with, let’s start with the most basic definitions and conceptions of psychological health. The World Health Company explicitly specifies mental health as “a state of well-being in which [an] individual realizes his or her own capacity, can deal with the normal tensions of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community.”
I think we can also think of mental health and health problem on a continuum that is represented in the depiction below. Here the key is to think about mental health on two associated however separable measurements of subjective experience and performance. Therefore, mental disorder is broadly defined in terms of psychological distress and dysfunction, whereas mental health can be thought of in regards to mental satisfaction/happiness and optimal functioning.
Please insert your caption here. Source: Gregg Henriques We can break this continuum model down more by means of the Nested Model of Human Well-Being, illustrated here.
Source: Gregg Henriques The Nested Design maps the construct into 4 related however likewise separable embedded domains: 1) the subjective domain, that includes the first-person phenomenological state of being; 2) the biological and psychological health and performance of the individual; 3) the material and social ecological context; and 4) the worths and ideology of the evaluator.
From this conception, wellness is achieved when there is a favorable positioning of these domains. That is, an individual is high in wellness when they are happy and satisfied with their lives, are operating well mentally and biologically, have access to necessary and desired material resources and social connections to meet their requirements (and the relative absence of damaging or unsafe stress factors), and are engaging in life with a function and a direction that is deemed by the evaluator to be great and ethical.
It deserves noting that we can if we “invert” the focus of the Nested Design, an outline of the crucial domains of health problem and pathology emerges. From an “inverted” viewpoint, domain one represents subjective feelings of distress, torment or discontentment with life; domain 2 would include maladaptive or inefficient mental and biological procedures; domain three would involve product and social contextual aspects that threaten to disrupt practical procedures (e.g., toxic substances or psychological abuse) and fail to meet fundamental biophysical and psychosocial requirements all in a way that is considered to be troublesome by the evaluator.
Some psychologists have attempted to specify the ingredients and outcomes that catch healthy psychological performance. An earlier blog post I did (see here) reviews Carol Ryff’s six domains that, according to her make up ideal mental performance and it likewise provides a brief study that you can require to see where you fall.
Finally, I will provide the perspective from the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM). The PDM was established by psychologists who wanted a contrast to the psychiatric-based DSM. Unlike the DSM which is essentially is without all notions of psychological health, the PDM does include a fairly well-specified list that tries to capture great psychological functioning, which are consisted of in the following slide.
Source: Gregg Henriques In sum, comprehending psychological health is as important as understanding psychopathology. Certainly, as my friend the pathologist kept in mind, if we are actually going to understand psychopathology, we must likewise understand mental health. Doing so can provide us a clear guide regarding what we are striving for when we try to increase human well-being.
Mental health is frequently an unclear notion that is defined in terms of the absence of psychopathology. This post briefly examines some frames for believing clearly about what makes up psychological health.
