Pruitt Center’s VIRTUAL SPEAKER: Corey Keyes to discuss his new book Languishing and the Mental Health Continuum

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Languishing to Flourishing: Mental Health on the Continuum

Description

Emory University sociologist Corey Keyes has spent his career studying the causes and costs of languishing—the neglected middle child of mental health. Having written the first definitive book on the subject, Keyes examines and presents an innovative approach to breaking the cycles keeping us stuck and finding a path to true flourishing. Unlike self-improvement systems offering quick-fix mood boosts and failing healthcare system focused on treating rather than preventing illness, his framework focuses on functioning well: taking simple but powerful steps to hold our emotions loosely, becoming more accepting of ourselves and others, and carving out daily moments for the activities that create cycles of meaning, connection, and personal growth.

Learning Objectives

1. Define, measure, and diagnose mental health along the mental health continuum – flourishing and languishing
2. Describe the dual continua model of mental health and illness and its four implications
   • The absence of mental illness does not mean the presence of flourishing
   • The level of good mental health determines how well youth function with but also free of mental disorders
   • The absence of good mental health – that is, languishing – can sometimes be as bad as the presence of a mental illness like depression
   • The loss of good mental health appears to be a cause of mental disorders like anxiety and depression
3. Describe the “wanting-doing gap” in mental health services. If you want youth to flourish, do not focus only on providing mental illness service and counseling or treatments for mental disorders. What lowers the bad does not increase levels of the good is a key finding from the two continua model.

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Biography

Corey Keyes is professor emeritus of Sociology at Emory University where he held the Winship Distinguished Research Professorship. He was a member of the prestigious international MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development and Aging. He has participated in several National Academies of Science initiatives – “The Future of Human Healthspan” and improving national statistics to measure recovery from mental illness.  He organized and co-hosted the first Summit of Positive Psychology held in 1999 at the Gallup Organization. His research introduced the concepts of social well-being, flourishing, the two continua model of mental health and illness, and his work is being used to prevent mental illness via the promotion of positive (flourishing) mental health. He is represented by the United Talent Agency (Agents: Albert Lee) and his recent book is entitled “Languishing: How To Feel Alive Again In A World That Wears Us Down,” published by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Penguin RandomHouse.

This talk is sponsored by the Student Behavioral Health Initiative, a Universities of Wisconsin priority to support student emotional health and well-being.