What does mental health have to do with well-being?

Abstract

Positive mental health involves not the absence of mental disorder but rather the presence of certain mental goods. Institutions, practitioners, and theorists often identify positive mental health with well-being. There are strong reasons, however, to keep the concepts of well-being and positive mental health separate. Someone with high positive mental health can have low well-being, someone with high well-being can have low positive mental health, and well-being and positive mental health sometimes conflict. But, while positive mental health and well-being are not identical, there is an informative conceptual connection between them. Positive mental health usually contributes instrumentally to the living of a good human life, where a good human life includes (but is not limited to) well-being.

Keywords: flourishing; positive mental health; positive psychology; welfare; well-being.