The PHCF architecture.
A structured classification of positive mental health designed to complement, not compete with, established systems for mental disorder, functioning and clinical formulation.
Four components answer four different clinical questions.
Current Positive Health State
What positive mental health is being experienced now?
Positive Health Capacities
What adaptive psychological capabilities appear available or potentially mobilisable?
Demonstrated Adaptation
What has the person's history shown they have been able to mobilise under meaningful challenge?
Protective Resource Ecology
What resources exist within and around the person, and are they available, accessible, usable or mobilised?
Positive health is not inferred from low symptom scores.
The framework treats positive health as information requiring its own evidence. Symptom reduction, functioning, quality of life and positive health may relate to one another without being interchangeable.
What PHCF is, and what it is not.
Used alongside diagnosis
PHCF is designed to add positive-health information to ordinary assessment, not to replace psychiatric diagnosis.
Not simply functioning
Functioning and quality of life remain important but are not treated as substitutes for positive-health classification.
Open to disconfirmation
The proposed components and their incremental value are empirical claims, not assumptions that must be protected from testing.