Mental Health as a Complete State: How the Salutogenic Perspective Completes the Picture

Summary & key facts

This chapter explains that mental health is more than just not being sick. It presents a “complete state” view: true health includes both the absence of mental illness and the presence of positive mental abilities like feeling good, functioning well, and connecting with others. The author reviews many studies showing that positive mental health and mental illness are partly separate. That matters because boosting positive mental health could help people function better and may lower the chance of future mental sickness, although the evidence comes from a mix of studies and more research is needed to know exactly what to do.

Key facts:

• There are three ways people have thought about health: one sees health as the absence of disease, a second (called salutogenic) focuses on the presence of positive strengths and capacities, and the third — the complete state model — says health means both being free of disease and having positive mental functioning.
• The World Health Organization’s definition of health matches the complete state idea: it describes health as a complete state that includes positive functioning as well as absence of infirmity.
• Research reviewed in the chapter finds that positive mental health (for example, feeling satisfied with life and functioning well socially) is not simply the opposite of mental illness. People can have low symptoms of illness but still not feel mentally well, a state sometimes called “languishing.”
• Some longitudinal studies (those that follow people over time) in the review show that people with higher positive mental health are less likely to develop mental illness later on, suggesting positive mental health may protect against future problems.
• Genetic and environmental research cited in the chapter indicates that the causes of mental well-being overlap only partly with the causes of common mental disorders. That means different factors shape feeling well versus having a disorder.
• The chapter is a review of many studies. That means it brings together evidence supporting the complete state idea, but it does not prove exactly how to promote positive mental health or how strong the prevention effects are across every group and situation.

Topics

Health, psychology, and well-being Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction Resilience and Mental Health

Categories

General Health Professions Health Professions Health Sciences

Tags

Affect (linguistics) Artificial intelligence Clinical psychology Communication Computer science Disease Environmental health Meaning (existential) Medicine Mental health Pathology Perspective (graphical) Population Population health Psychiatry Psychology Psychosocial Psychotherapist

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Depression PTSD Anxiety or worry Sadness or low mood