Mental health is almost always spoken about from a starting point of mental illness. We know all about what bad mental health is. But what does good mental health look like? From Maslow’s self-actualization to Rollo May’s The Meaning of Anxiety, we can explore the possibilities of psychological well-being and discover that meaning and calm through psychological storms is the key to positive mental health, writes Paul G. Mattiuzzi

While I was in graduate school in the late 1970’s, a short-lived, student-run newsletter published under the banner: Freedom From Disabling Anxiety Press – a play on the common “Free Press” moniker.

We were training to diagnose the human condition in terms of a nosology founded on a medical model that defined “mental health” as the absence of psychiatric illness. The term “mental health” refers to disorder, disease and infirmity, and not actual health or well-being. Positive psychological health is referenced in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) only by way of a code number for “no diagnosis.”