Experts from different cultures and disciplines identified six core dimensions of positive mental health.

The dimensions of positive mental health include meaning and purpose, self-acceptance, and connection.

Mental health is a multidimensional construct with overlapping components.

Mental health has become a central trope of the Zeitgeist. As with the recent collective interest in optimizing physical health and longevity, people want to know how to get happier.

Body and mind are intricately connected, of course, despite our tendency to treat them as two separate riches to safeguard. When it comes to tending our bodies, we are inundated with advice on what to eat, how to move, when to rest. If we are trying to get stronger, reach a number on a scale, or alter key blood values, there is some or other well-paved road that leads to our goals.

But when it comes to our minds, things are less straightforward. To begin with, we don’t even have a comprehensive picture of the very thing we are trying to improve—a construct that goes by many names: flourishing, mental well-being, mental health, quality of life. Poignantly, the field of happiness is fraught with intricacies and ambiguities that create challenges as much for the happiness-seekers as for the researchers and policy-makers seeking to implement interventions.

A recent study set out to address the fragmentation that dominates in well-being research by creating a preliminary taxonomy of the dimensions that make up positive mental health. The study used the Delphi consensus method—a structured technique for tapping into collective intelligence. This method is used across various fields to reach a consensus among a panel of experts through multiple rounds of questionnaires. After each round, panel members receive feedback summarizing the group’s results and adjust their answers until they reach a consensus. Among the advantages of this “forecasting tool” are the anonymity of the experts, the iterative process,........

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