Taking as its starting point a series of traditional divisions and debates, this paper approaches issues of`mental' health through the specific lens of the emotions. Key themes and organising principles here include the following: (i) reason versus emotion (ii) biology versus society (iii) the micro and the macro divide, and finally (iv) the medicalisation-demedicalisation of society. Each of these divisions is critically assessed and some`new' ways forward provided through a commitment to the emotions, their relationship to`mental' health and to rationality and, more generally, to their`fate' in late 20th century Western society. The paper concludes with some further reflections on these and related emotional health matters, including a critique of the very notion of`mental' health as a contradiction in terms.