Positive mental health: is there a cross‐cultural definition?

The great epidemiological studies of the past half century have focused upon who was mentally ill and not who was well.Mental illness, after all, is a condition that can be defined reliably, and its limits are relatively clear.Until recently, only the Sterling County Studies by A. Leighton (1) came close to defining positive mental health operationally.In addition, it has been argued that achieving above average mental or physical health is not the province of medicine, but of education.Early in the past century, internists began studying physiology at high altitude and devise measures of positive physical health for athletes, pilots, and finally astronauts.In 1929-30, at the University of California at Berkeley, the Institute of Human Development was founded by H.Jones, N. Bayley and J. McFarlane (2,3).Originally created to study healthy child development, the Institute was to provide a seminal influence on E. Erikson's model of healthy adult development.In the late 1930s, A. Bock, an internist trained in high altitude physiology and interested in positive physical health, began the Study of Adult Development at the Harvard University (4,5).This was designed as an interdisciplinary study of both mental and physical health.Like physical fitness, positive mental health is too important to be ignored, but its definition is not easy.Several precautions are necessary.First, in defining mental health, cross-cultural differences must be kept in mind.My own efforts Positive mental health: is there a cross-cultural definition?