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.
A layered positive-health information system.
The source clinical classification establishes context but remains external to PHCF. The Universal Core provides the common transdiagnostic layer. Clinical Presentation Modules add specificity only when justified. Course and evidence qualifiers preserve the evidentiary and longitudinal meaning of each classification.
Source Clinical Classification
DSM, ICD, HiTOP or another recognised clinical formulation is retained as used.
Current Positive Health State
Positive self-experience, engagement and vitality, belonging and connection, meaning and valued direction.
Positive Health Capacities
Agency and self-direction, adaptive regulation, psychological flexibility, relational capacity, meaning and identity, recovery and self-management.
Demonstrated Adaptation
Historical evidence of strategy development, help seeking, recovery following deterioration, persistence and restoration of valued activity.
Protective Resource Ecology
Personal, relational, cultural, community, material, structural and treatment-related resources, interpreted through availability, accessibility, usability and mobilisation.
Clinical Presentation Modules
Presentation-specific information is added only when it contributes beyond the Universal Core.
Course and Evidence Qualifiers
Trajectory, context, evidence source, relevant time period, confidence and uncertainty.
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?
Additional specificity without creating a positive DSM.
The modules are not diagnoses and do not replace diagnostic assessment. They are provisional development areas intended to capture presentation-specific positive-health information only when it adds something beyond the Universal Core. Multiple presentations should not result in repeated assessment of the same Universal Core constructs.
Depressive Presentations
Re-engagement, restoration of agency, recurrence recognition, maintenance of valued activity and mobilisation of support.
Anxiety and Fear Presentations
Approach capacity, tolerance of uncertainty or distress, flexible responding to threat and restoration of restricted activity.
Trauma and Stressor Presentations
Safety, threat discrimination, relational trust, adaptive meaning, demonstrated adaptation and contextual protection.
Bipolar and Mood-Instability Presentations
Mood-state awareness, early-warning recognition, sleep and routine management, support mobilisation and continuity of identity.
Psychosis Presentations
Personal recovery, identity, meaning, connectedness, empowerment, self-management and early recognition of deterioration.
Substance and Addictive Presentations
Recovery capital, recovery identity, mobilisation of social and community resources and sustained recovery self-management.
Obsessive-Compulsive Presentations
Flexibility in responding to intrusive experiences, tolerance of uncertainty and restoration of valued behaviour.
Eating and Feeding Presentations
Identity beyond the disorder, autonomy, self-compassion, relational recovery, meaning and recovery self-management.
Personality Functioning and Interpersonal Presentations
Identity coherence, agency, relational capacity, repair, adaptive regulation and contextual stability.
Neurodevelopmental Presentations
Self-understanding, environmental fit, self-advocacy, adaptive regulation, supportive resources and meaningful participation.
Classification needs context, trajectory and uncertainty.
A PHCF entry can record descriptive level, date or relevant time period, trajectory, context, evidence source and confidence. Not Assessable is appropriate when information is insufficient.
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.