C orey Keyes is associate professor of Sociology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a MacArthur Postdoc in Aging at the University of Wisconsin, a member of a MacArthur Foundation Research Network on “Successful Midlife Development,” co-chair of the first summit of Positive Psychology, and he is currently a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion, where he is a core member of the “Pursuit of Happiness” 5-year project funded by the $1.5 million grant from the Templeton Foundation. He was invited and participated in the 2007 National Academies of Science Keck Future’s Initiative on The Future of Human Healthspan: Demography, Evolution, Medicine and Bioengineering. Corey contributed to the World Health Organization’s publication on Mental Health Promotion Worldwide, and continues to consult and work with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), Public Health Canada, and the United Kingdom’s National Health Service regarding mental health and its promotion in children and adults.
His model of mental health as a complete state is being adopted by Public Health Canada into its national surveillance program in all Canadian Provinces, and he is currently working with the Senior Advisor on children’s mental health to the Director at SAMHSA to create programs and research on positive mental health. He is also currently consultant to the S. Engelhard Center and the American Association for Universities and Colleges on its “College Outcomes” project, and is Co-PI on a proposed “College Outcomes Longitudinal Study” to study the effects of liberal education on college students’ mental health and academic achievement. Dr. Keyes is currently a collaborator on four nationally representative studies: the “Child Development Supplement” (which is part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics) to study the role of mental health in positive youth development, the MIDUS (Midlife in the United States) longitudinal follow-up on successful aging, the MESS panel study in the Dutch Population (with Gerben Westerhof at University of Nijmegen), and the FORT (“Fortology”) Study in South Africa (with Marie Wissing, Project Director, Northwest University in Potchefstroom, South Africa).
Corey’s research centers on illuminating the “two continua” model of health and illness, showing how the absence of mental illness does not translate into the presence of mental health, and revealing that the biological and social causes of true health are often distinct processes from those now understood as causes of illness (which means that the matter of promoting better health is not simply reducing those things we know to cause illness).
This work is being applied to better understanding resilience in minority populations, and to prevent mental illness through promotion. Moreover, the two-continua model and research informs the growing healthcare approach called “predictive healthcare,” which seeks to map an monitor true (physical and mental) health and to develop and apply novel responses to correct early deviations to it to maintain health and limit disease and illness.
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