DIMH

• Marie Jahoda (1958) devised the concept of ‘ideal mental health’.
• She described six characteristics that individuals should exhibit in order to be viewed as normal.
• Failure to show all these characteristics means a person is in poor mental health 
• Positive attitude towards self: Having self respect and a positive self concept.
• Self actualisation: Experiencing personal growth and development – becoming everything that one is capable of becoming.
• Autonomy: Being independent, self reliant, and able to make personal decisions
• Resisting stress: Having effective coping strategies and being able to cope with everyday anxiety- provoking situations
• Accurate perception of reality:  Perceiving the world in a non- distorted fashion. Having an objective and realistic view of the world.
• Environmental mastery: Being competent in all aspects of life and able to meet the demands of any situation. Having the flexibility to adapt to changing life circumstances.
• P- Defining abnormal behaviour through deviation from ideal mental health raises the issue of imposed etic, as Jahoda’s classification is specific to Western European and North American cultures.
• E- For example, the concept of self-actualisation would be considered self-indulgent in most of the world due to the emphasis placed on the individual rather than the family and so in some cultures self-actualisation would be seen as a negative characteristic rather than a quality of ideal mental health.
• E- Even within Europe there is quite a lot of variation in the value placed on personal independence (e.g. high in Germany, low in Italy). This is a limitation of defining abnormality in this way, as there are too many inconsistencies in the behaviours considered abnormal in between and within different cultures.
• L- This therefore reduces the external validity , as it is difficult to apply the concepts of ideal mental health from one culture to another. 
• P- One strength of this definition is that it uses a specific criterion to define the characteristics of ideal mental health.
• E- Jahoda (1958) described six characteristics including positive attitude, autonomy and resistance to stress to define ideal mental health and claimed that anyone who did not exhibit these characteristics was not showing ideal mental health and was therefore abnormal.
• E- The use of a criterion to define ideal mental health is a strength of this definition as it allows for a consistent and standardised measurement to be used in the assessment of people’s mental health.
• L- This is a strength as it provides an objective and reliable measure for diagnosing if a person is deviating from ideal mental health. 
• P- A limitation of this definition is that the 6 criteria used to define abnormality are over-demanding
• E- For example, some of Jahoda’s criteria are very difficult to achieve, in particular self-actualisation.  Very few people achieve self-actualisation in their lifetime and as a result according to this definition would be inaccurately labelled as abnormal.
• E- Furthermore, the definition fails to consider the context of behaviour, it may be that someone is going through a difficult time resulting in all criteria not being met for a temporary period of their life, however this doesn’t necessarily mean they are abnormal
• L- This is a limitation as since most of the criteria are very difficult to meet it would mean that most of the population would meet the criteria for deviation from ideal mental health and would therefore be inaccurately classed as abnormal.