Knowledge of psychological well-being persistently lags behind knowledge of psychological dys-function. The imbalance is evident in magnitude of research–studies of psychological problems dwarf the literature on positive psychological functioning–and in the meaning of basic terms (eg, typical usage equates health with the absence of illness). A person is viewed as men-tally sound if he or she does not suffer from anxiety, depression, or other forms of psychological symptomatology. This prevailing formulation never gets to the heart of well-ness; to do so, we must define mental health as the presence of the positive.