Positive mental health across the life span

Cross-cultural mental health research

Despite the fact that social factors and cultural background are widely recognized as potentially highly relevant influences on mental health, cross-cultural comparative studies remain rare. Psychological, biological, and even sociological theories of mental health typically strive for universal validity and claim to be transcultural. Yet, most of our theories and studies are formed and conducted intraculturally (within a single culture, typically North American or Western European). For them to be truly transcultural, they must first be examined cross-culturally.

A major problem of comparative cultural research is that it mostly uses data from different studies collected with heterogeneous methods at different times. Because of the large variance in, for example, diagnostic criteria and practices and the poor testing of transcultural measurement invariance, these comparisons are very inaccurate. Also, the relationship among the various positive constructs such as optimism, life satisfaction, resilience, and happiness, as well as the nature of positive mental health, is unclear. These are questions that we investigate within the framework of the BOOM project. Our investigations take place in representative and student samples in countries including China, Germany, France, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.