Mental Health, Mental Illness, and Psychological Distress: Same Continuum or Distinct Phenomena?

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the relationships among mental health, disorder and distress are a key source of conflict in the sociology of mental health and that the features of the conflict have the potential to call into question much of the accumulated scientific knowledge on mental health. To address this issue, I attempt to empirically assess three competing frameworks regarding these relationships: (1) the "modal perspective," (2) the "Mirowsky and Ross perspective," and (3) the "positive psychology perspective." Results, however support a "discontinuous perspective: "no underlying continuum among any of the three concepts. These results suggest that researchers need to avoid the common practice of "lumping together" distress, disorder, and mental health and study each in their own right. Subsequent tests attempt to further specify the relationships among these concepts. Results indicate a strong positive directional association from distress to disorder a strong negative directional association from distress to mental health, and no significant relationship between mental health and disorder. These results are used to generate a number of directions for future research.