A person with positive mental health uses interpersonal assets and skills to function successfully in his or her daily
life. Mental health problems emerge when these assets and skills begin to deteriorate, resulting in a struggle to cope
with life’s challenges and responsibilities. The continued deterioration of these skills signals the onset of mental illness as significant distortions to thinking, coping, and responding dominate personal functioning and impair a person’s ability to perform the activities of daily life. All people fall somewhere on this continuum on any given day.