Table 2.

Definitions of flourishing across health-related disciplines.

Author	Discipline	Definition
Keyes 2002	Positive psychology	“Adults with complete mental health are flourishing in life with high levels of well-being. To be flourishing, then, is to be filled with positive emotion and to be functioning well psychologically and socially."
Seligman 2011	Positive psychology	“I now think that the topic of positive psychology is well-being, that the gold-standard for measuring well-being is flourishing, and that the goal of positive psychology is to increase flourishing."
Huppert & So 2013	Positive psychology	“Flourishing refers to the experience of life going well. It is a combination of feeling good and functioning effectively. Flourishing is synonymous with a high level of mental wellbeing, and it epitomises mental health (Huppert 2009a, b; Keyes 2002; Ryff and Singer 1998)."
Vanderweele 2017	Positive psychology	“Flourishing itself might be understood as a state in which all aspects of a person's life are good. We might also refer to such a state as complete human well-being, which is again arguably a broader concept than psychological well-being."
Ryff & Singer 2008; Ryff 2014	Positive psychology	Flourishing, understood as “eudaimonic well-being,” involves “striving toward excellence based on one's unique potential” or “striving to achieve the best that is within us.”
Garland-Thomson 2019	Bioethics/Disability studies	“Flourish is a verb … To flourish is to do something. … to ‘grow or develop … In a vigorous way’ within ‘a particularly congenial environment.’”
Roberts 2019	Bioethics/Critical legal theory	“… for individuals to flourish, they must be situated in societies that promote their flourishing. … It is not an accident that the assumed understanding of human flourishing has been determined by what improves the well-being of those who are the most privileged in society and in a way that legitimizes their privileged position. … [I]t has elided structural inequalities that advantage them and disadvantage others.”
Jennings 2019	Bioethics	“Contemporary notions of flourishing … call for the creation of an associational environment of rights, equality, dignity, and respect in which each person has the social supports and opportunities necessary to develop many capabilities and to realize many pathways of self-development and meaningful self-identity.”
Willen et al., 2021	Anthropology/Public health	“We define the pursuit of flourishing as an active process of striving to live in keeping with one's defining values, commitments and vision for the future, as individuals and in the context of one's family and the communities to which one belongs. Flourishing is not simply a psychological state, but an active pursuit informed by cultural expectations and social relationships, and influenced by the social, political and economic structures that shape people's lives.”

The top half of the chart presents definitions from positive psychology, and the bottom half presents definitions from the critical social sciences of health.