In our master's thesis, which was part of the international study “Identity Orientations and Mental Health in Adolescence: Examining the Roles of Basic Psychological Needs and Culture”, we investigated the role of the basic psychological needs in mental health of 500 Slovenian adolescents. Mental health is presented as the subjective well-being of the individual, which was determined based on the positive emotional attitude and satisfaction with life of young people, while mental problems were determined on the basis of the negative emotional attitude, anxiety and depression of young people. The theory of selfdetermination by Ryan and Deci, which assumes three basic psychological needs, which are autonomy, competence and connectedness, was taken as a theoretical background. We hypothesized a differential connection between satisfaction and obstruction of needs with the mental health of adolescents, as newer research assumes the existence of mental health and mental problems as separate, but related continuums, unlike past concepts, which often conceptualized mental health as the absence of mental health problems. According to the results of the multiple regression analysis, in which we predicted mental health based on the satisfaction and obstruction of needs, we can talk about the differential connection between the satisfaction and obstruction of needs with mental health and so about two different continuums, as it was shown, that the obstruction of three fundamental needs better predicts mental health problems and fulfillment of the three basic needs better predicts subjective well-being, which lead us to conclude, that mental health problems and mental health or subjective well-being, are two separate constructs and therefore it is better to study them separately.
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