Positive Psychology for Adolescence

Life is an ongoing process of experiences, learnings and challenges. Sometimes, it is effortless to sail through all of these experiences but at times you have to grapple along these challenges. What all we go through in our lives affects us in one way or the other in regards to our feelings, thoughts and behavior especially in adolescence years. Many individuals deal with even similar situations differently as per their personality, strengths and virtues. It is quite interesting to observe and note that some of us are flourishing in our lives and on the flip side, some are struggling and feeling distress in a given circumstances.

Psychology plays a prominent role in assessing and articulating an answer to this question: How can people make their lives worth living by enduring positive qualities? (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

This blog post would further illustrate the answer to this question by introducing and describing positive psychology, objectives and underlying assumptions of this field of psychology, how it has evolved over the years and ways in which it can be pertinent to enhance the wellbeing of adolescents

Highlights of Positive Psychology

Initially, psychology had three key roles to play in the lives of people:

• Curing individuals with mental health issues
• Making the lives of people more accomplishing
• Nurturing the strengths of the individuals

But soon after the sufferings of World War II, psychology was more about diagnosing and curing individuals with the treatments and the other two missions were just left untouched (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

Considering this imbalance of mission accomplishment with conventional psychology, where it is just not a science to heal people from mental health diseases, instead it is also a practice to make humans more competent by unleashing their strengths- Martin Seligman in 1999 coined the term and movement of Positive Psychology (Pawelski, 2016).

Petersons 2006 defines, “Positive psychology is a scientific study of what goes right in life, from birth to death and at all stops in between”. The framework of positive psychology is research based and has evolved over time which aims to achieve the balance between good and bad, positives and negatives, peaks and valleys of life by building traits in humans through which they can flourish and nurture themselves. It does not ignore the unpleasant experiences of life.

The second wave of positive psychology is dialectical in nature which means the dynamic relationship between two opposite qualities such as:

• Optimism and Pessimism
• Self Esteem and Humility
• Freedom and Restriction
• Forgiveness and Anger
• Happiness and Sadness

Posttraumatic Growth- it can also be associated with lot of positive changes after the trauma has happened and Love- it can trigger lot of negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, hate (Lomas and Ivtzan, 2016).

In my opinion, Positive Psychology 2.0 has made the theory quite substantial and practical as it elucidates the dual lens by taking into account both the aspects of life (good and bad; positive and negative; success and failure) which makes its application real and effective. It has the potential to make people realize their strengths by identifying the weaknesses too and then planning out an empirical intervention to minimize the impact of negatives by strengthening the positives which ultimately leads to wellbeing of an individual

Adolescents and Positive Psychology

Nearly 16% of the world population comprises adolescents (individuals with age of 10 to 19 years) and they experience numerous changes and transitions as it is the period between childhood and adulthood (UNICEF, 2022). Adolescent years are very crucial in anyone’s life as neuroplasticity (capacity of the brain to change and re-wire) is maximum at this point of life and it becomes evident that they require different dosage of attention and interventions as compared to adults (Owens and Waters, 2020). Adolescents are the future of any country and their high wellbeing will be instrumental for the growth of any society as a whole but they do face a lot of challenges during these precious years.

This stage of life is developmental and it brings in plenty of positive and negative experiences both physically and emotionally and dealing with these challenges can be quite overwhelming, which sometimes engage them in malpractices such as school wrongdoing, irregularity, strained relationship with parents and substance abuse (Mcknight et al., 2002).

I have been working in the school settings of India for the last few years and over this course of time I think it is inevitable now especially after the pandemic that the concepts like wellbeing and life satisfaction should be introduced in adolescent years which will help them to perceive good and bad experiences and stressors from a broader perspective. The results of meta-analysis of effects of school based positive psychology interventions on well being and distress in adolescents suggests that positive psychology interventions increase the psychological wellbeing and reduce the depressive symptoms in both long and short term thereby positively impacting mental health of adolescents (Gallardo et al., 2020)

I engaged and interacted with the target audience of 5 adolescents (3 girls and 2 boys) of the age 14 to 18 years on one to one basis by asking, “what do they mean by the terms positive psychology and wellbeing?”. Also, they were given an instruction that there is no right or wrong answer and can share what they think freely. When I started the conversation with them by asking, “What is wellbeing for you at this age and point of time?”- First of all, they took a few seconds to think about it and it feels as if they never thought about this question before. Some of the interesting insights shared by them were: Wellbeing in general means to be physically fit, stress free, little fun, doing what you enjoy, being comfortable with your own self, doing productive tasks and when life is less complicated.

As per Mental Health Commission of NSW (2017), “ Wellbeing can be understood as how people feel and how they function both on a personal and social level, and how they evaluate their lives as a whole”.

People define wellbeing in different ways and generally it is how well your life is going on various outlooks such as social, psychological, financial, personal, physical, spiritual and emotional. Sometimes, people use happiness and wellbeing as synonyms. Broadly, happiness can be defined as Hedonic- when life is satisfying for an individual by seeking pleasures and Eudaimonic- when life is satisfying for an individual because of the sense of purpose it makes to create a difference and where lifestyle is governed by the character strengths (Wong, 2011). Most of the lay audience were talking more about physical, emotional and psychological wellbeing. At this point of life (adolescence), individuals focus more on “Who they are as a person?”, identifying their goals but the way to achieve those goals seems to be unclear (Bronk et al., 2009).

The second conversation revolved around the question, “What does positive psychology mean?” all 5 of them seemed to be confused with this one but then they answered that Positive psychology could be enriching people with positive thoughts, when there are no negative thoughts, replacing negative emotions with positive and being optimistic. Positive psychology creates a balance between positive and negative and it is not the absence of negative emotions but most of the adolescents thought it is about thinking positive and never negative. Positive education interventions can help adolescents immensely to differentiate between pleasant life (pleasure seeking) and good/engaged life by identifying their key strengths and virtues to achieve high level life satisfaction (Kristjansson, 2012). Positive psychology 2.0 argues that to focus on nurturing people only in good times is just one aspect but in totality it is more about building the best in people by applying evidence based applications in both bad and good times to promote wellbeing despite all the limitations they face internally or externally (Wong, 2011)

Though my lay audience (adolescents) was not very clear of the concepts. However, they were all open to talk and share their thoughts and it seemed that they wanted to talk more about it. Increased levels of inattention, boredom and disassociating with challenging tasks in adolescence years are not just mere symptoms of mental illness; instead it is lack of positive development in them (Larson, 2000). Absolutely, there will be a significant number of obstacles to practice and apply positive psychology interventions as this field of study is not integrated into the school curriculum but managed and designed by external professionals (Gallardo et al., 2020).

All in all, positive psychology is an emerging and evolving evidence based theory of applications which aims to bring out the best in people by increasing their life satisfaction. Research on life satisfaction amongst adolescents is still at its nascent stage (Huebner et al., 2000). A well designed for adolescence years program inclusive of activities which are strength and meaning based at school levels can help us build a community of youth with a meaningful purpose in life.

References:

Bronk, K. C., Hill, P. L., Lapsley, D.K.,Talib, T. L., & Finch, H. (2009). Purpose, hope, and life satisfaction in three age groups. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 500-510. DOI: 10.1080/17439760903271439

Huebner, E. S., Funk, B. A., & Gilman, R. (2000). Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Psychosocial Correlates of Adolescent Life Satisfaction Reports. Canadian Journal of School Psychology, 16(1), 53–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/082957350001600104

Kern, M. L., Waters, L. E., Adler, A. & White, M. A.(2015). A multidimensional approach to measuring well-being in students: Application of the PERMA framework. The Journal of Positive Psychology 10 (3), 262-271. DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2014.936962

Kristjansson, K. (2012). Positive Psychology and Positive Education: Old Wine in New Bottles? Educational Psychologist , 47(2), 86–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2011.610678

Larson, R. W. (2000). Toward a psychology of positive youth development. American Psychologist, 55(1), 170-183. DOI: 10.1037//0003-066X,55.1.170

Lomas, T., & Ivtzan, I. (2016). Second Wave Positive Psychology: Exploring the Positive–Negative Dialectics of Wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 17(4), 1753–1768. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-015-9668-y

McKnight, C.G., Huebner, E.S. & Suldo, S. (2002). Relationships among stressful life events, temperament, problem behavior, and global life satisfaction in adolescents. Psychology in the Schools, 39(6), 677-687. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.10062

NSW, M. H. C. (2017). Wellbeing language and definitions guide 2017 (pp. 1–44). Mental Health Commission of NSW.

Owens, R. L., & Waters, L. (2020). What does positive psychology tell us about early intervention and prevention with children and adolescents? A review of positive psychological interventions with young people. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(5), 588–597. 6 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1789706

Pawelski, J. O. (2016a). Defining the ‘positive’ in positive psychology: Part I. A descriptive analysis. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(4), 339–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1137627

Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, USA. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55(1), 5-14. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.55.1.5

Tejada-Gallardo, C., Blasco-Belled, A., Torrelles-Nadal, C., & Alsinet, C. (2020). Effects of School-based Multicomponent Positive Psychology Interventions on Well-being and Distress in Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Journal of Youth Adolescence, 49, 1943–1960. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-020-01289-9

UNICEF. (2022, April). Investing in a safe, healthy and productive transition from childhood to adulthood is critical. https://data.unicef.org/topic/adolescents/overview/

Wong, P. T. P. (2011). Positive psychology 2.0: Towards a balanced interactive model of the good life. Canadian Psychology 52(2), 69-81. https://doi.org/10.1037/a002251