Psychology
2011. Vol.2, No.8, 767-772
Copyright © 2011 SciRes. DOI:10.4236/psych.2011.28117
767
Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health: Surpass the Traditional
Mental Health Model
Xinqiang Wang, Dajun Zhang*, Jinliang Wang
Research Center of Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Email: *zhangdj@swu.edu.cn
Received August 13th, 2011; revised September 17th, 2011; accepted October 22nd, 2011.
Aiming at the limitations of traditional mental health model, the dual-factor model of mental health (DFM) was
proposed as a new idea under the background of positive psychology trend. According to the DFM, mental
health is a complete state; subjective well-being should be included into the mental health evaluation system as a
positive indictor; in terms of prevention and intervention, the DFM asserted that the decrease of symptoms is
only the first step of intervention, and the improvement of subjective well-being should be followed, in order to
achieve the complete mental health states and reduce the recurrence of illness. Finally, this paper put forward
evaluation on DFM and its future research directions.
Keywords: Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health, Subjective Well-Being, Psychopathology, Psychological S uzhi
Introduction
There has been the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Sta-
tistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), DSM-IV, issued
by American Psychiatric Association since all countries are
paying increasing attentions to human being’s mental health.
The DSM-IV includes the diagnostic standards and therapeutic
plans for more than 340 kinds of mental or psychopathologic
illness, but it does not actually relieve psychological patients
from the pain. Instead, the number of psychological patients
across the world is doubled and redoubled (Ren, 2006). There-
fore, we should reflect the traditional mental health model and
strive to find a new and scientific mental health model with
high effectiveness and efficiency. The Dual-Factor Model of
Mental Health (DFM) is a new mental health concept and
methodology that is made based on positive psychological con-
cepts and relevant empirical evidences to solve the deficiency
in traditional mental health models.
At present, although many scholars have proposed DFM, and
have conducted the relevant empirical research, systematic
illustration is not available. Therefore, the present article tries
to, based on previous work on DFM, systematically illustrates
the background, basic opinions and the relevant empirical re-
search of DFM; briefly introduces the contributions of DFM;
and focuses on criticizing the deficiencies and further research
directions of DFM.
Background to Make the Dual-Factor Model of
Mental Health
Deficiency in Traditional Mental Health Models
It is too dependent on one-dimensional and negative indica-
tors of diagnosis (i.e., psychopathology). Traditional mental
health diagnosis generally uses negative psychopathology (PTH)
indicator and takes the DSM as standards for psychological
diagnosis. As a widely used diagnostic standard, DSM is play-
ing a positive role in diagnosing and treating mental disorder.
However, this diagnostic tool just defines whether there is
mental disorder or not in respect of mental health and relates it
with negative results. Mental health is thus deemed as an in-
ferred by-product of “no mental illness” (Suldo, & Shaffer,
2008). Mental health and mental illness are deemed as two
opposite poles of a continuum (Greenspoon, & Saklofske,
2001). The research into mental health is restricted in the psy-
chopathology and focuses on mental disorder (Keyes, 2007;
Doll, 2008) and neglects the patient’s capacity of self-restoration
and self-upgrade (Carr, 2008).
There are risks of overestimation or underestimation in di-
agnosing individual’s mental health. It is unsure whether the
mental health diagnosis system based on DSM is reliable and
effective (Davies, & Bhugra, 2008). According to such tradi-
tional one-dimensional and negative indicators of diagnosis (i.e.,
psychopathology), if the disorder does not meet certain stan-
dards, the individual will be classified as subclinical. The men-
tal health of those subclinical individuals may be overestimated
to a large extent and their future development may be in risk.
However, they cannot be discriminated in psychopathologic
tests, so they will not be intervened with and prevented (Green-
spoon & Saklofske, 2001; Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008).
In addition to overestimation of subclinical individuals’
mental health, the mental health of individuals who have mental
illness may be underestimated. They may be restored to mental
health step by step without intervention (Greenspoon & Sak-
lofske, 2001; Keyes, 2007; Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008), or obtain
mental health by increasing individual’s positive forces (Dunn,
& Dougherty, 2005).
There are partially effective intervention, ineffective inter-
vention and relapse in respect of the effect of intervention. The
concern of traditional mental health models is whether there is
mental illness and their main purpose is to relieve symptoms
(Keyes, & Lopez, 2002; Seligman, 2008). Findings through
etiology and improvements in diagnostic tools have made much
diagnosis clearer, and many effective talk therapies and selec-
tive serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) reduce and relieve the
symptoms. However, such therapy may only have partial or
transient effects, or in respect of some mental illness, there are
even ineffective interventions or relapse. Let’s take depression
for example. Many patients’ depressed symptoms, after being
treated with SSRI, are just relieved partially or transiently and
there is no effect for one third of the patients who take medica-
X. Q. WANG ET AL.
768
tion (O’Reardon, Brunswick, & Amsterdam, 2000). Moreover,
according to many therapies, the symptom relief can only last a
short period, and 60% to 70% of unipolar major depression
patients have suffered relapse in 6 months (Ramana, et al.,
1995).
Some Positive Indicators (i.e. Subject Well-Being,
SWB) Concerned More and More People
Traditional mental health models are too dependent on PTH
indicator, which is unhelpful for correctly understanding and
assessing metal health (Greenspoon, & Saklofske, 2001). Re-
searchers begin to question the effects. Jahoda began to ques-
tion the concept that “to achieve mental health is to eliminate
mental illness” as early as 1958. He believed that “the absence
of disease may constitute a necessary, but not sufficient,
criterion for mental health” (p. 15) (Jahoda, 1958). Cowen
(1991) ever advocated human beings to intensify the research
into optimal development, and he believed that “wellness is
something more than/other than the absence of disease, that is,
it is defined by the ‘extent of presence’ of positive marker
characteristics” (p. 154).
After primary prevention and the campaign for health pro-
motion, the positive psychology movement emerged and people
further corrected the normal form mainly targeted for morbid
psychology. They believed that it was necessary to add such
positive indicators as SWB into the mental health assessment
system in order to identify the individual or group whose men-
tal health was at high risk or re-worsened, which challenged the
one-dimensional definition that mental health is that an indi-
vidual has no PTH symptoms. Diener et al. believed that the
absence of disease is not an adequate criterion to describe a
person as mentally healthy, particularly not as possessing high
or even average levels of SWB (Diener, Lucas, & Oishi, 2002;
Seligman, 2008). They also believed that, even an individual’s
mental illness have been cured, it cannot maintain or ensure his/
her mental health (Keyes, 2007; Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008).
Therefore, they believed that integration of the positive indica-
tor SWB and the negative PTH indicator in mental health as-
sessment will be helpful to comprehensively understand mental
health (Cowen, 1994; Greenspoon, & Saklofske, 2001; Park,
2004; Snyder et al., 2003; Huebner, Valois, Suldo, et al., 2004;
Huebner, Gilman & Suido, 2007; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008). The
Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health was gradually established
in the aforesaid ba ck gr ou nd .
Basic Concepts of Dual-Factor Model of Mental
Health
The Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health mainly covers two
stages which takes emergence of positive psychology as the
boundary. The first stage is before the emergence of positive
psychology. It is the embryonic stage of the Dual-Factor Model
of Mental Health when the concept of this model was prelimi-
narily put forward and the two-dimensional structure, consist-
ing of mental illness and SWB, was verified by measurement
among adults and teenagers (Veit, &Ware, 1983; Wilkinson, &
Walford, 1998). The second stage is from the emergence of
positive psychology to the future. Theoretical explanation and
relevant empirical research was made around connotation, di-
agnosis, classification of people, prevention and intervention in
respect of mental health (Greenspoon, & Saklofske, 2001;
Keyes, & Lopez, 2002; Keyes, 2002, 2005, 2007; Suldo, &
Shaffer, 2008; Doll, 2008). Since the model was put forward by
different scholars in different periods, different terms with the
same meaning appeared. For example, Greenspoon and Sak-
lofske put forward the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health in
2001 for the first time and named it as “dual-factor system
(DFS) of mental health”; Keyes and Lopez named it in 2002 as
“Mental Health and Mental Illness: The Complete State Model”;
Keyes named it in 2005 as “Complete State Model of Mental
Health”; Keyes renamed it in 2007 as “Two Continua Model of
Mental Health and Illness”; Suldo and Shaffer, Doll named it in
2008 as “Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health”. We have con-
cluded such different terms used by different scholars for this
model by referencing existing literatures on the Dual-Factor
Model of Mental Health. Please see the following Table 1 for
details.
Mental Health Should Be a Complete State
Traditional mental health models used the one-dimensional
perspective and placed the SWB and PTH symptoms on two
opposite poles. However, the Dual-Factor Model of Mental
Health insists from a more comprehensive perspective that
mental health is not the absence of mental illness or the high
Table1.
Terms used for dual-factor mo d el o f m e n t al h e a l t h .
Subject Well-Being (SWB)/
Subjective well-being symptoms\Mental health diagnosis
Psychopathology (PT H)/
Mental Illness/
DSM–III–R 12-month
mental illness diagnosis Low
Low SWB/Low well-being
symptoms/
Languishing/
Moderate
Moderate SWB /
Moderately mentally
healthy
High
High SWB/High well-being
symptoms/Flourishing/
Low
Low PTH/No
Low Mental Illness/
Incomplete Mental Health I/ Low
SWB-low PTH/
Incomplete mental
health/Languishing/
Pure Languishing/
Dissatisfied/Vulnerable
Incomple t e Mental Health II/
Moderate mental
health/Incomplete mental
health/
Complete Mental Health/
High SWB-low PTH/
Flourishing: Complete mental
health/Flourishing/Well adjusted/
High
High PTH/Yes
High Mental Illness/
Complete Mental Illness
Low SWB-high PTH/ Mental
illness and languishing/
Depressed and Languishing/
Distressed/Troubled
Incomplete Mental Illness II
Mental illness and
moderately mentally healthy/Incomplete
mental illness/Pure Depression
Incomplete Mental Illness I
High SWB-high PTH/
Incomplete mental illness/Mental
illness and Flourishing/Externally
maladjusted/Symptomati c but
content/Pure Depression
X. Q. WANG ET AL.
769
SWB, but a complete st ate that integrat es the absenc e of mental
illness and the high SWB (Greenspoon, & Saklofske, 2001;
Keyes, & Lopez, 2002; Keyes, 2005; Keyes, 2007; Suldo, &
Shaffer, 2008; Doll, 2008). The positive indicator and negative
indicator of mental health (i.e. SWB and PTH symptoms)
compose a pair of continuums as two independent but correla-
tive structures.
Classifies the Mentally Healthy People
Traditional mental health diagnosis was to simply define
whether there was mental disorder or not or whether it is cor-
relative with negative results. The diagnosis system was abso-
lutes and thus deficient (Davies, & Bhugra, 2008). However,
the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health takes SWB, the posi-
tive indicator, and PTH symptoms, the negative indicator as
two indispensable factors for mental health diagnosis and thus
generates two mental health states and two mental illness states.
In this model, the mental health states include a complete state
and an incomplete state and the mental illness states also in-
clude a complete state and an incomplete state. It can be used to
classify people into different groups based on such states and to
forecast the mental health functions of those different groups
and the development trend of their mental health according to
the above mentioned two indicators (Keyes, & Lopez, 2002;
Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008). The quartered classification theory
and the derived sextupled classification theory have been estab-
lished up to now.
Quartered classification theory. Greenspoon and Saklofske
(2001), Keyes and Lopez (2002) as well as Suldo and Shaffer
(2008) et al. classified the people into four groups according to
PTH and SWB, i.e. complete mental health, incomplete mental
health, incomplete mental illness and complete mental illness.
Completely mentally healt hy people have low PTH and high
SWB, and Keyes (2002, 2007) also called them as “flourishing”.
Complete mental health is a state that integrates high SWB and
no recent PTH and is the optimal wellness of individuals.
Therefore, individuals in this group can perform emotional
vitality as well as good psychological and social functions. It
can be forecasted that they will suffer no mental illness in the
near future (12 months) (Keyes, 2007).
Incompletely mentally healthy people have low PTH and low
SWB. Suldo and Shaffer (2008) called them as “vulnerable”,
while Keyes (2002, 2007) called them as “languishing”. They
were always overestimated by traditional mental health models
since their PTH symptoms did not reach the PTH diagnosis
standards. They were often excluded from the research and the
service (Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008). However, they may need psy-
chological help in fact since they may become languishing or
suffer mental disorder in future development. A longitudinal
research made by Lewinsohn et al. (1991) proved such possi-
bility. It was found that the non-depressed participants whose
life satisfaction scores were low at the beginning may become
depressed two or three years later (compared with those whose
life satisfaction scores were high or at the average level).
Incomplete mental illness patients have high PTH and high
SWB, and Suldo and Shaffer (2008) also called them “symp-
tomatic but content”. Even though they have mental illness,
such as depression, they have positive characteristics, such as
moderate or high SWB. Therefore, perhaps they do not have the
same level of mental disorder even though they are identified as
abnormal (Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008). Researchers forecast that
they may easily recover from mental illness due to expansion
and formation of positive emotions and positive cognitive
judgments of life, which is consistent with Bohart and Tall-
man’s concept that “patients are able to cure themselves” and
Hoyt’s ideas on new directions of psychotherapy innovation
(Keyes, & Lopez, 2002).
Complete mental illness patients have high PTH and low
SWB, and Suldo and Shaffer (2008) called them as “troubled”.
Complete mental illness is a syndrome that integrates low SWB
and recent mental illness, such as depression. Therefore, the
adults suffering complete mental illness will not only have the
syndrome of depression, but also feel unsatisfied with the life
and have poor psychological and social functions.
Greenspoon and Saklofske (2001), Suldo and Shaffer (2008)
preliminarily verified the existence and availability of quartered
classification theory of Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health
among primary school students and junior middle school stu-
dents respectively by empirical evidence. For example, Suldo
and Shaffer (2008) found during typical sampling among mid-
dle school students that completely mentally healthy students
accounted for 57%, vulnerable (incompletely mentally healthy)
students accounted for 13%, symptomatic but content students
(incomplete mental illness) accounted for 13%, and trubled
students (complete mental illness) accounted for 17%. This
research also indicated that there was significant difference
among such four groups in respect of academic outcomes,
physical health, and social functioning: completely mentally
healthy (low PTH and high SWB) students had better reading
skills, school attendance, academic self-perceptions, academic-
related goals, social support from classmates and parents, self-
perceived physical health, and fewer social problems than in-
complet ely mentally healthy (low PTH and low SWB) students
and those suffering incomplete mental illness (high PTH and
high SWB); among the students with clinical PTH syndromes
(including complete mental illness and incomplete mental ill-
ness), those with higher SWB (i.e. those suffering incomplete
mental illness) were more aware of social functions and physi-
cal health.
Sextupled classification theory. Keyes put forward the sextu-
pled classification theory based on the quartered classification
theory (Keyes, 2002, 2005, 2007). He replaced low/high PTH
syndromes (PTH standard) in the quartered classification theory
with yes/no, and re-divided high and low mental health (i.e.
SWB) in the quartered classification theory into high, moderate
and low SWB. Keyes used three terms for this purpose, i.e.
flourishing (i.e. high SWB), languishing (i.e. low SWB) and
moderately mentally healthy (i.e. moderate SWB). People can
thus be re-classified into 6 groups according to the two dimen-
sions: complete mental health, incomplete mental health I, in-
complete mental health II, complete mental illness, incomplete
mental illness I and incomplete mental illness II.
Keyes found in the research into 3,032 25 - 74 year-old
American adults that complete mental health (flourishing) ac-
counted for 17.2%, incomplete mental health I (pure languish-
ing) accounted for 12.1%, incomplete mental health II (moder-
ate mental health) accounted for 56.6%, complete mental illness
(depressed and languishing) accounted for 4.7%, incomplete
mental illness I (pure depression) accounted for 0.9%, and in-
complete mental illness II (pure depression) accounted for 8.5%
(Keyes, 2002). He also found in following research that there
was significant difference among those groups in respect of
health awareness, restriction of daily activities, psychosocial
functioning, working days, use of health care services etc.
Completely mentally healthy adults had the fewest missed days
of work, the fewest half-day or greater work cutbacks, the
healthiest psychosocial functioning (such as low helplessness,
X. Q. WANG ET AL.
770
clear goals in life, high resilience, and high intimacy), the low-
est risk of cardiovascular disease, the lowest number of chronic
physical diseases with age, the fewest health limitations of ac-
tivities of daily living, and lower health care utilization (Keyes,
2007). Therefore, he advocated improving mental health status,
maintaining completely mentally healthy (flourishing) and tak-
ing it as the supplementary strategy for improving Americans’
mental health status so as to prevent Americans from mental
illness and cure s uc h il l ne s s if any.
Purpose of Psychological Prevention and Intervention
Previous research showed that individuals’ mental disorder
in early stage may induce other complications, increase the
probability of relapse of mental illness and make the treatment
more complicated (Keyes, & Lopez, 2002). Therefore, the
Dual- Factor Model of Mental Health emphasizes positive pre-
vention and advocates to use the aforesaid two-dimensional
(PTH and SWB) classification standard to identify which indi-
vidual need improve the SWB in order to actively prevent
mental illness and which individual need intervention, espe-
cially to identify incompletely mentally healthy group and those
suffering incomplete mental illness, so as to effectively solve
the problem that traditional one-dimensional PTH indicator
system eliminates incomplete mental health from prevention
and intervenetion and to make such prevention and intervention
more specific and better targeted (Suldo, & Shaffer, 2008).
In respect of intervention and treatment, this model no longer
makes patients remain incompletely mentally healthy (lan-
guishing) and deems disappearance of syndromes as the end of
treatment, but holds that incomplete mental health may be the
intermediate point for individuals to suffer mental illness or go
completely mentally heal thy. “Symptom reduction may be only
a first step in treatment” (p. 50-51) (Keyes, & Lopez, 2002). It
insists that intervention and treatment should help people over-
step the base line of their previous psychological functions and
finally achieve complete mental health (see Figure 1). It be-
lieves that the enhancement of such positive factors as SWB
will improve the effects of intervention and treatment and com-
plete mental health may effectively reduce the probability of
relapse. If there is any sign of relapse within several months
after a patient receives the treatment, psychological diagnosis
may confirm that he/she is an incompletely mentally healthy
individual and further treatment is required to make him/her
achieve co mplete mental health.
Koivumaa-Honkanen et al. found in the six-year tracking re-
search on the adult sufferer of mental illness that the most ef-
fective intervention method is to not only reduce the PTH syn-
drome, but also improve the patient’s SWB and psychological
resources so that the patient can better profit from it (Koivu-
Figure 1.
Making changes beyond baselines. Note: this figure was made with
reference to Keyes and Lopezs literatures (2002).
maa-Honkanen, et al., 2008). This has, to a certain extent, de-
scribed the important role of such positive factors as SWB in
intervention and treatment and supported the aforesaid views of
the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health.
Brief Appraisal and Prospect of Dual-Factor
Model of Mental Health
The Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health emphasizes that
mental health is a complete state, which is to overcome the
clinical deficiencies in traditional mental health PTH. It changes
the one-dimensional model (there is/there is no mental illness)
and is a self-improvement in the mental health research field.
Present empirical research among teenagers and adults has
proved the existence of this model and that it can effectively
classify people into different groups. This model not only em-
phasizes the important role of SWB in mental health, but also
advocates PTH indicator. It further emphasizes the unsubsti-
tutability and indispensability of the two indicators (Green-
spoon, & Saklofske, 2001; Keyes, 2007; Suldo, & Shaffer,
2008; Doll, 2008). This also provides theoretical support for
positive mental illness prevention and treatment (Seligman,
2008) and positive mental health education (Meng, 2008). That
is to say, mental health services must include cultivation of
such positive factors as SWB (Weissberg, Kumpfer, & Selig-
man, 2003; Weisz, Sandler, Durlak, & Anton, 2005), and ob-
taining positive strengths is the necessary precondition for indi-
viduals to obtain optimal academic (or working) achievement
and optimal physical and mental health (Keyes, 2007; Suldo, &
Shaffer, 2008).
This model can distinguish the complete state from incom-
plete state of mental illness and mental health and make diag-
nosis, which will generate more effective prevention and inter-
vention plans and thus improve the standards on relieving PTH
syndromes (Keyes & Lopez, 2002; Suldo & Shaffer, 2008).
School psychologists and health care service providers should
consider including SWB scale into individual’s routine evalua-
tion (such as psychological survey and physical and psycho-
logical examination) in order to better determine an individual’s
position in the multi-layer service provision model, distinguish
incompletely mental illness people from those suffering com-
plete mental illness and provide the maximum-strength inter-
vention for complete mental illness sufferers. We believed that
the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health will cause profound
influence to mental health and the whole education and public
health sector in the near future.
“New-born things definitely have an ugly appearance”, so
the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health also has some defi-
ciencies and requires further research:
First, the connotation of SWB is to be determined. The exis-
tence of SWB is the key that distinguishes the Dual-Factor
Model of Mental Health from traditional one-dimensional PTH
indicator. However, the present psychological circle does not
have a fixed definition of SWB and no common understanding
has been achieved (Gao & Zheng, 2009). Some scholars, such
as Greenspoon, Saklofske, Suldo and Shaffer, believed that the
connotation of SWB should be composed of life satisfaction,
positive affect and negative affect in this model, while Keyes
and Lopez et al. believed that SWB should include emotional
well-being, psychological well-being and social well-being.
Therefore, researchers need, on one hand, further “define the
well-being, strengthen the research into meaning of well-being
and build a more reasonable structure of well-being” (Gao &
Zheng, 2009), and, on the other hand, need repeatedly add
X. Q. WANG ET AL.
771
SWB indicator into empirical research into the dual-factor
model and examine continuously to find out the most sensitive
SWB indicator and measurement tool.
Second, the forecast function of the Dual-Factor Model of
Mental Health is to be further proved. Although some empirical
research supports this model in respect of the ideas that “com-
pletely mentally healthy people can be free from mental illness”,
“incomplete mental illness sufferers are more likely to recover
by themselves” and “incompletely mentally healthy people may
suffer mental disorder in future development”. However, this is
far from enough for proving the effective forecast functions of
this model, so much experimental verification is required in
further research for the forecast functions of this model, such as
related longitud inal research.
Third, the guiding effect of Dual-Factor Model of Mental
Health for intervention therapy is to be confirmed. Present re-
search has proved that some intervention measures may en-
hance the SWB (Wang & Wang, 2008; Meng, 2008). However,
what degree of SWB can be deemed as the end of intervention
therapy? Is it true that a completely mentally healthy people
will not suffer relapse of any mental illness? Such problems
need further research and verification.
Fourth, are there any other positive indicators, in addition to
SWB, in the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health? Can posi-
tive cognition (such as optimism) and positive personality (such
as psychological resilience) beyond positive subjective experi-
ences (Meng, 2008; Doll, 2008) as well as endogenous psy-
chological suzhi (Zhang, Wang, & Yu, 2011) be included into
or be used to replace SWB? Those require further discussion. It
should be noted that it also deserves discussion whether the
localized indicator in China “psychological suzhi” should be
included into or be used to replace SWB so as to better perform
the functions of this model. For example, Zhang et al. also put
forward in the 1990s the idea consistent with positive psychol-
ogy and the Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health and started
the research that integrated school mental health education and
cultivation of students’ sound psychological suzhi (Zhang,
2004; Zhang, & Feng, 2000; Zhang, Wang, & Yu, 2011). They
indicated: the current school mental health education actually
inherited traditional mental health education. It only focused on
the “adaptability” function of mental health education, but ig-
nored its “development” function; it was only targeted for a few
students with mental disorder or illness, but ignored the major-
ity of them; it only emphasized problems in explicit behavior,
but ignored the solution of endogenous problems and the culti-
vation of sound psychological suzhi for students. They insisted
“the school mental health education mode, whose precondition
is to keep students mentally healthy (symptom), whose basic
purpose is to cultivate sound psychological suzhi for students
(essence) and whose major task is to guide students to actively
adapt to the environment and improve students’ positive de-
velopment, and its new research concepts” (Zhang, 2004). They
believed that “generally speaking, the people with sound and
high psychological suzhi are unlikely to suffer mental disorder;
even though mental disorder appears, they are generally able to
make self-adjustment to keep themselves mentally healthy.
Contrarily, the people with unsound or low psychological suzhi
are likely to suffer mental disorder; they are even unable to
make self-adjustment in case of any mental disorder and thus
are often suffer mental illness” (Zhang, 2004). It can be easily
concluded that the role of high/low psychological suzhi here are
extremely similar to that of high/low SWB in the Dual-Factor
Model of Mental Health. Therefore, psychological suzhi should
be included in the model to develop relationship model between
psychological suzhi and mental health in further research
(Wang, & Zhang, 2011). It will be the new research area of
mental health research.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by the fund of School Social Work
Safeguard System for College and Middle School Student’s
Mental Health (06XSH012), and supported by the fund of Psy-
chological research for contemporary university students' social
adaptation(10JHQ003).
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