Wellness is an active process of becoming aware of and making choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life. Wellness is more than being free from illness - it is a dynamic process of change and growth. The World Health Organization describes wellness as "...a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."

Mental health refers to our cognitive, behavioral, and emotional wellbeing – it is all about how we think, feel, and behave.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health is “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community”

Finding it difficult to manage how we think, feel, act or how to manage daily stresses, could be a sign of poor mental health. ... Mental health problems are health conditions that are characterised by alterations in thinking, mood or behaviour, but good mental health is more than simply the absence of problems.

Mental Health impacts directly on Wellness in a dynamic reciprocal relationship, affecting every level of functioning and the different contexts within which we apply ourselves (including our work performance, daily life activities, relationships,etc.). It is not hard to imagine how the experience of discomfort (like aches and pains), negative emotions (like sadness, anxiety), moods (like depression), illnesses (like the flu), loss, trauma, etc. may affect your work performance, personal relationships, your relationship with yourself, family life, etc. It is also not hard to see how each area of your life is related to and impacts on the other in continuous reciprocity. For example, when you experience the loss of a loved one, it may affect your functioning in your family, work, relationships, etc.; problems you experience at work may affect your functioning in the workplace itself, relationships with colleagues, home, etc.; health conditions (like having suffered a stroke) may affect your physical abilities, mood, family, relationships, work, etc. - the list goes on and on...

The mental health and wellness of staff has been found to impact directly on work performance measures. For example, the work performance of a staff member who may be depressed/anxious as a result of any one or combination of life stressors may be impacted upon negatively by his/her experience of low energy levels, lack of concentration due to his/her preoccupation with thoughts of their experienced problems, etc. How people deal with life (and organizational) stressors gives us an indication of habits, lifestyle, health outcomes, etc. As a result of the habit of drinking alcohol to cope with one or more life stressors, an individual may develop digestive problems for which he/she is absent from work, having been booked off by a medical doctor for a digestion system-related condition. An underlying untreated emotional concern may be exacerbating his/her condition, as he/she has not developed the emotional capacity/resources to constructively deal with emotional stressors he/she may encounter. This affects his/her ability to adequately apply him/herself in the workplace, hereby affecting his/her work performance. His/her frequent absence from work affects other staff members, as his/her colleagues now have to share his/her duties as well, leaving them dissatisfied and overworked. Work performance is therefore impacted upon negatively by a myriad of wellness variables that interact in a complex way. Variables such as absenteeism, staff morale, management styles, etc., are all affected by and affect the wellness of staff and the organization in a complex way.

Assessing the mental health and wellness of staff helps identify individual and organizational fators that may impacting on staff functioning, highlighting possible risks and developmnental areas, as well as provides important information regarding resources required to support staff and organizational functioning and development.

THE word ‘profile’ may not be unfamiliar to many. Profiles carry information about a person’s life, work, character, behaviour and hobbies. In our attempt to describe somebody, we will gather as much information of the person as possible.

Profiling is a scientific activity — the recording and analysing of people’s psychological and behavioural tendencies, preferences and characteristics to get a better description of how they function and how likely they would function in the future, based on their psychological characteristics and traits.

As a scientific activity and inquiry, profiling does not depend on assumptions or stereotypes of people’s behaviour and character to base judgment on them. Adhering to an empirical principle like this helps us avoid misperceptions of people.

Mental health profiling entails accumulating and gathering as much information as possible about people using standard and empirical psychological assessment tools, and then thoroughly and as objectively as possible measure their mental health stability and psychological functioning.

On the level of the individual, wellness profiling entails using relevant scientifically-designed assessment tools or questionnaires to identify wellness risks and needs, providing pertinent information to the individual to assist him/her in making lifestyle changes to impact positively on his/her wellness, affecting outcomes in his/her intra-and interpersonal life, work, sport, school, relationships, etc.

In an organizational context, it entails identifying organizational wellness risks and needs, providing wellness information to the organization related to aggregate, average and distribution of scores of staff to assist the organization in making organizational changes to impact positively on the wellness of staff and the organization, affecting performance outcomes in terms of staff and organizational performance.