Flourishing among children and adolescents: Structure and correlates of positive mental health, and interventions for its enhancement

Abstract

One of our colleagues posted an office whiteboard question, "What do you want your child to be?", and noted the complete absence of answers such as "not depressed or anxious"; not a single parent wrote "not a drug addict". We hope for positive futures for our children, not futures absent of negatives . No one will argue that avoidance of problems, such as substance abuse, suicide, or juvenile delinquency, is undesirable or unimportant. While we can say that "the kids are alright" because "at least 80 % of youth in a typical year remain free of mental disorder" (Keyes 2009 , p. 9), this begs a number of questions: Is alright an adequate goal for our children's well-being? Does alright really equate to being mentally healthy? The benchmarks for mental health that we outline in this chapter are positive, going beyond the absence of problems. In the past, research has focused on the measurement and reporting of negative indicators, such as the avoidance of substance abuse and delinquency (Gillham et al. 2002 ; Moore and Keyes 2003 ). This pathology or deficit model has been the traditional and predominant approach to studying how children develop (Halle 2003 ; Roberts et al. 2002 ), and a similar deficit framework has been dominant in the fields of early-childhood and youth development (Lerner 2009 ; VanderVen 2008 ). However, with the new millennium came an increased focus upon positive indicators of youth well-being, as the following two examples attest.