A theoretical model of psychological well-being that encompasses 6 distinct dimensions of wellness (Autonomy, Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth, Positive Relations With Others, Purpose in Life, Self-Acceptance) was tested with data from a nationally representative sample of adults (iV-1,108), aged 25 and older, who participated in telephone interviews. Confirmatory factor analyses provided support for the proposed 6-factor model, with a single second-order super factor. The model was superior in fit over single-factor and other artifactual models. Age and sex differences on the various well-being dimensions replicated prior findings. Comparisons with other frequently used indicators (positive and negative affect, life satisfaction) demonstrated that the latter neglect key aspects of positive functioning emphasized in theories of health and well-being.

Think about how we describe someone who is mentally ill or who seems a bit "odd." They are crazy, insane, mad as a hatter, psycho, mental, off his rocker, loony, abnormal, non compos mentis, nutty as a fruitcake, cuckoo, daft, unhinged, bananas, loco, whacko, out of her mind, or deranged. He has bats in his belfry. A screw loose. She's lost her marbles. The list is endless. Now think about how we describe someone who is mentally healthy. The list is a lot shorter. He or she might be described as mature or self-actualized or well-adjusted. There aren't a lot of options, and they lack the pizzazz of the first list. Maybe that is why we devote much less attention to mental health than to mental illness. Maybe because so little attention has been devoted to mental health, we don't have a rich vocabulary to talk about it. It is probably a little of both, and it is probably also a result of the general acceptance of the medical model of mental illness. The medical model holds that when something is wrong with an individual the clinician's role is to fix the problem, to cure the person, to eliminate the symptoms. Then the person is normal again. Normal means that there is nothing wrong. The fact that we call it mental "illness" and talk about "cure" and "symptoms" suggests that madness is analogous to if not identical with physical disorder. In applying the medical model to mental illness, a clinician's goal is to remove a problematic behavior or set of ideas that is interfering with a person's ability to live "normally." When this is done, the person is okay, they are normal. Is this as good as it gets? Some psychologists have given attention to thinking about what it means to be something beyond "okay."

A continuous assessment and a categorical diagnosis of the presence (i.e., flourishing) and the absence (i.e., languishing) of mental health were proposed and applied to the Midlife in the United States study data, a nationally representative sample of adults between the ages of 25 and 74 years (N ϭ 3,032). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the hypothesis that measures of mental health (i.e., emotional, psychological, and social well-being) and mental illness (i.e., major depressive episode, generalized anxiety, panic disorder, and alcohol dependence) constitute separate correlated unipolar dimensions. The categorical diagnosis yielded an estimate of 18.0% flourishing and, when cross-tabulated with the mental disorders, an estimate of 16.6% with complete mental health. Completely mentally healthy adults reported the fewest health limitations of activities of daily living, the fewest missed days of work, the fewest half-day work cutbacks, and the healthiest psychosocial functioning (low helplessness, clear life goals, high resilience, and high intimacy).

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Subjective well-being (SWB) is evaluation of life in terms of satisfaction and balance between positive and negative affect; psychological well-being (PWB) entails perception of engagement with existential challenges of life. The authors hypothesized that these research streams are conceptually related but empirically distinct and that combinations of them relate differentially to sociodemographics and personality. Data are from a national sample of 3,032 Americans aged 25-74. Factor analyses confirmed the related-but-distinct status of SWB and PWB. The probability of optimal well-being (high SWB and PWB) increased as age, education, extraversion, and conscientiousness increased and as neuroticism decreased. Compared with adults with higher SWB than PWB, adults with higher PWB than SWB were younger, had more education, and showed more openness to experience.Research on well-being has flourished in recent decades (Diener, Suh, Lucas, & Smith, 1999; Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999), with increasing recognition of the different streams of inquiry guiding this broad domain. Ryan and Deci's (2001) integrative review organized the field of well-being into two broad traditions: one dealing with happiness (hedonic well-being), and one dealing with human potential (eudaimonic well-being; Ryan & Deci, 2001; see also Waterman, 1993). In the present study, we draw and extend these distinctions, which we refer to as traditions of research on subjective well-being (SWB) and psychological well-being (PWB). We use these terms to underscore the fact that studies of SWB have repeatedly included not only affective indicators of happiness (hedonic well-being) but also cognitive assessments of life satisfaction. In addition, some aspects of PWB (e.g., personal growth, purpose in life) but not others (e.g., positive relations with others, self-acceptance) reflect the self-fulfillment meanings of eudaimonic well-being. As described below, SWB and PWB are also the overarching phrases most frequently used in studies that constitute these traditions, both of which are fundamentally concerned with subjective accounts of well-being.Our specific empirical aims are to examine whether indicators of SWB and PWB constitute taxonomically distinct reflections of well-being in a national sample of U.S. adults. Although both approaches assess well-being, they address different features of what it means to be well: SWB involves more global evaluations of affect and life quality, whereas PWB examines perceived thriving vis-à-vis the existential challenges of life (e.g., pursuing meaningful goals, growing and developing as a person, establishing quality ties to others). We further test the hypothesis that these distinct varieties of well-being are contoured by the broad categories of sociodemographic and personality factors. Specifically, we investigate the role of location in the life course (i.e., age) and position in the socioeconomic hierarchy (e.g., educational status) as well as personality traits in accounting for different profiles of well-...