Positive Mental Health, Subjective Vitality and Satisfaction with Life for French Physical Education Students

The multidimensional model of mental health includes both emotional and functional well-being. Functional well being is made up of psychological and social well-being. The factor structure of the Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF), designed to measure these three factors, has been confirmed with a sample of U.S. adolescents and adults. Mental health can be seen as a continuum, where an individual's mental health may have many different possible values. Mental illness and mental well-being form two continua in the population. The purposes of this study were: 1) To test the factor structure and internal consistency of 5 scales: 4 subjective well-being scales and psychological distress scale (GHQ-12) with 509 French physical education students. 2) Examine the bi-dimensionality of complet mental health by the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). 3) Testing the correlation among mental well-being, mental illness, subjective vitality and the satisfaction with life. Results show a good structure validity for only 4 scales; the bi-dimensionnality of the complet mental health proposed by Keyes [1]. In addition, findings confirm a positive and siignificant correlations among the positive well-being scales (MHC-SF; SVS and SWLS) and negative correlation between these positive constructs and the GHQ-12.