1.1 What is positive psychology and how can it help with wellbeing in the home?
Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that investigates how all of us can live happier and more fulfilling lives.
Despite its name, it is not just about being positive all the time and it certainly can’t offer a permanent state of bliss. However, it can improve your wellbeing and help you and your family feel a bit happier at home.
Its success is also based on using scientific research to provide techniques that are proven to help people to flourish.
What positive psychology has to offer
In the video below, Michelle Tytherleigh, a positive psychology researcher from the University of Chester in the UK, discusses what positive psychology has to offer families.
Download this video clip.Video player: unit_1_introduction_v2.mp4
Transcript
MICHELLE:
As a parent, you'll probably agree that what most of us want for our children is for them to be happy and healthy. In fact, science has shown that being happy can also have major benefits on our health, including living a healthier lifestyle, overcoming stress, boosting our immune system, and protecting the heart. In fact, being happy can even increase our longevity.
In the introduction to this course, you learned how positive psychology is interested in what enables us to live happier and more fulfilling lives. In short, how positive psychology is interested in what is good about life and what makes life most worth living.
As part of this research in positive psychology has been interested in the emotions, the strengths, the processes, the conditions, and the relationships that foster optimal functioning. More recently, research has also looked at the role that positive psychology can play when life does not go right, like the pandemic.
And what it has found is that whilst many individuals have endured high levels of distress during the pandemic, many have still also been able to experience positive mental health as well, in short, by feeling good, functioning well, and doing good. And we call this post-traumatic growth.
For example, some research that was carried out in China, which analysed the words that were used on social media immediately before and soon after COVID, showed that even though there was an increase in anxiety and depression, happiness and life satisfaction, albeit reduced, was still present too.
With research carried out into positive parenting, positive psychology also comes with great news for parents. Again, based on scientific research, we now have a wealth of knowledge, tools, and resources that can help parents be the best that they can be for their children. And of course, we hope that this course will be a start of this journey for you.
And if you'd like to know more about positive parenting and some of the research and benefits that have been identified, please do check out the additional resources that you will find as links at the end of this course.
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Course introduction