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In the field of public health, mental health has had a great deal of relevance. This concept has been used extensively in the professional, academic, and political fields. Despite that, the different definitions of mental health face significant epistemological and practical problems. These difficulties are encountered by those who try to specify the meaning of "mental", the relationship between "health" and "mental", and, consequently, how research and intervention actions are to be carried out in the field of mental health. In practice, the orientation of actions and research involving mental health is not based on "universal" definitions in the field of public health. It is rather based on conceptions constructed from different approaches to the health-disease issue. This paper discusses the conceptions of mental health that have been configured from the biomedical, behavioral, and socio-economic approaches, the notions of "mind" underlying these conceptions, and their implications for intervention in the field of public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflection which seeks to stimulate discussion and debate concerning the different meanings that the concepts of generalization and inference can take on, based on the approach or perspective that is being employed. For this purpose the importance and usage which has been accorded to these concepts within the field of classic-modern epidemiology is taken into consideration, especially in order to define internal and external validity issues and to formulate hypotheses. Next the main arguments are presented and are defended by Clifford Geertz from his epistemological perspective of interpretive ethnography and based on his theoretical conception of culture. Subsequently the ideas maintained by Juan Samaja are presented from his epistemological and methodological approach for research into health, advocating primarily for abductive reasoning, and not simply inductive and deductive, which have until now been privileged in logic studies. Finally a discussion and conclusions are presented, highlighting that from these three perspectives public health has the opportunity to expand its new knowledge generation processes and to better understand the conditions for good collective health and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]