A languishing-flourishing model of goal striving and mental health for coaching populations

Abstract

Coaching focuses both on facilitating goal attainment and enhancing well-being. Yet there has been little work on developing models that integrate mental health/illness issues with goalstriving. This is important because many distinctions between coaching and therapy have been based on the supposed differing levels of psychopathology in clinical, counselling and coaching populations. However, research suggests that some coaching clients have high levels of depression, anxiety or stress, and there is recent evidence that coaching clients who voluntarily seek life coaching tend to have higher levels of psychopathology than individuals who undertake coaching as part of a workplace coaching program. These findings underscore the importance of coaches having a sophisticated understanding of the issues related to coaching and mental health. Drawing on recent languishing-flourishing work in the area of positive psychology this paper presents a new provisional model of goal striving and mental health/mental illness with two key dimensions: (i) mental health-illness; and (ii) intentional goal striving (high or low). The languishing section of the model represents individuals who are have low levels of psychological or subjective well-being but do not have elevated levels of depression, anxiety or stress. The acquiescent section is where individuals have good levels of mental health and but have low levels of intentional goal striving. The flourishing section is where individuals have high levels of mental health and are actively engaging in high levels of intentional goal striving. The model also delineates a distressed but functional client group who have high levels of intentional goal striving, but significant levels of psychopathology, and distinguishes those from clients with major psychopathology but very low levels of intentional goal striving, Recommendations are made for future coaching research and practice.