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SUMMARY:Mental Health Without Well-being - Anna Alexandrova   Reader in Ph
 ilosophy of Science\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science\, Un
 iv of Cambridge
DTSTART:20190708T134500Z
DTEND:20190708T144500Z
UID:TALK127327@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lucy Lloyd
DESCRIPTION:What is it to be mentally healthy? In the ongoing movement to 
 promote mental health at work and in schools\, to reduce stigma and to est
 ablish parity between mental and physical health\, there is a clear enthus
 iasm about the central concept and a recognition of it as a central value 
 in human life. \n \nHowever\, it is much less clear what mental health mea
 ns in all these efforts and whether there even is a single concept underly
 ing them. Sometimes the initiatives for the sake of mental health are aime
 d just at reducing mental illness\, thus implicitly identifying mental hea
 lth with the absence of diagnosable psychiatric disease. More ambitiously\
 , there are also prominent initiatives in public health and policy that ad
 opt positive definitions identifying mental health with psychic or even ov
 erall well-being. But those looking for an explicit agreed upon definition
  will be disappointed.\n \nTo make progress we first identify a definition
  of mental health that is clearly too thin and undemanding – mental heal
 th as absence of mental illness – and a definition that is too ambitious
  and too demanding – mental health as the state of general well-being ac
 ross all aspects of social and personal life. \n \nThere are compelling re
 asons to reject both: the first one ties mental health too closely to the 
 controversial concepts and methods of psychiatry\, while the second one th
 reatens to set up an impossible ideal\, to medicalise unhappiness\, and to
  make controversial philosophical judgments about the good life look false
 ly scientific. We then sketch out a middle position. On this view mental h
 ealth is a primary good\, that is the psychological preconditions of pursu
 ing any conception of the good life\, including well-being.
LOCATION:Clinical School\, Seminar Room 10
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