Positive mental health: Measurement, prevalence, and correlates in a Chinese cultural context

Abstract

Recently in China, the trend has been to start to explore the measurement of positive mental health among ordinary populations. Using mental health continuum-short form (MHC-SF) scale, this chapter studied the status of positive mental health on Chinese people with a sample of 1,981 adults. The findings showed the MHC-SF replicated the three-factor structure of emotional well-being, social well-being, and psychological well-being found in US samples. The internal reliability of the overall MHC-SF scale was 0.94. The percentage of participants in poor mental health (i.e., languishing) was below ten. Roughly 12.7 % of Chinese flourishing adults scored more than 22 on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D). It might to be a distinctive characteristic of adult mental health in a Chinese cultural context that their score of positive mental health is high as well as their score on depression.