Week 9 - Mental Health Literacy

Well being is a multi dementional concept in psychology that includes

Hedonic Well being

Eudaimonic Well-being

Hedonic well being

Hedonic well-being = Feeling good

This comes from the idea that happiness means:

• pleasure

• comfort

• enjoyment

• positive emotions

• avoiding pain

Examples:

• Eating ice cream

• Watching Netflix

• Going on vacation

• Laughing with friends

• Drugs and Alcohol

These make you feel good.

The key question is:
“How happy do you feel?

Eudaimonic

Eudaimonic well-being = Living well

Instead of asking am I happy, you’re asking “Am I becoming the person I’m capable of beomcing”

Examples:

• Raising children

• Finishing university

• Volunteering

• Helping clients

• Learning difficult skills

These aren't always fun. Sometimes they're stressful. But they make life meaningful.

The key question becomes:

“Does my life have purpose”

Hedonic = Pleasure

Eudaimonic = Purpose

When it comes to measuring well-being, researchers make a distinction between:

Objective well-being is defined by indicators of what many people define as 'a good life'; for example, level of education, income, employment, and life expectancy.

Subjective well-being is strongly associated with life satisfaction and it is positively correlated with subjective well-being. Meaning when Objective wellbeing increases Subjective well being generally increases.

Subjective wellbeing

There are three domaines of Subjective well-being:

• Psychological well-being: Knowing yourself, self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, meaning, etc.

• Emotional well-being: Presence of positive feelings, absence of negative feelings, life satisfaction, etc.

• Social well-being: Sense of belonging and inclusion, having a social support network, developing meaningful relationships with others, etc.

Objective Well Being

Objective well-being is defined by indicators of what many people define as 'a good life'; for example, level of education, income, employment, and life expectancy . Objective well-being is strongly associated with life satisfaction and it is positively correlated with subjective well-being.

Who discovered Positive psychology

Dr. Martin Seligman

Positive Psychology

Positive psychology is defined as "the scientific study of what makes life most worth living"

Whereas traditional psychology focuses on "what's wrong", positive psychology seeks to understand "what's right" and "what's working".

For most of psychology's history, psychologists mainly asked:

• What causes depression?

• What causes anxiety?

• Why do people develop addictions?

• How do we treat mental illness?

Instead of studying suffering, it studies:

• happiness

• purpose

• strengths

• optimism

• gratitude

• relationships

• achievement

• resilience

Think of it like medicine.

Traditional psychology asks:

"How do we cure disease?"

Positive psychology asks:

"How do we help healthy people become healthier?"

What are Seligman's Three Pathways to Well-being

Seligman believed there are three main ways people experience well-being.

1. Pleasure

2. Engagment

3. Meaning

Pleasure

Feeling good.

Examples:

• Good food

• Music

• Friends

• Relaxing

• Vacation

This is the hedonic side.

Engagment

Being completely absorbed in something.

This is called flow.

Imagine:

You're writing a paper.

You look up...

Three hours have passed.

You weren't bored.

You weren't thinking about yourself.

You were completely immersed.

That's engagement.

Athletes experience it.

Musicians experience it.

Gamers experience it.

Therapists sometimes experience it during deep sessions.

Meaning

Feeling that your life contributes to something larger than yourself.

Examples:

• Raising a family

• Working in social work

• Being a therapist

• Volunteering

• Spiritual beliefs

Meaning is strongly connected to eudaimonic well-being.

What is flourishing according the Martin Seilgman?

PERMA

P – Positive Emotion: Experiencing pleasant emotions such as joy, gratitude, hope, contentment, and love. While positive emotions are important, Seligman argues they are only one part of well-being.

• E – Engagement: Becoming deeply absorbed in activities that challenge your skills, often referred to as experiencing "flow." During flow, people become so immersed in what they're doing that they lose track of time.

• R – Relationships: Building and maintaining supportive, meaningful connections with others. Strong social relationships are consistently associated with greater psychological well-being.

• M – Meaning: Feeling that your life has purpose and contributes to something larger than yourself, such as family, community, faith, or a meaningful career.

• A – Accomplishment (Achievement): Working toward and achieving goals, mastering new skills, and experiencing a sense of competence and success.

What is Thriving according to Ryan Niemiec

This extends beyond flourishing. “The ultimate accomplishment in life.”

Flourishing

• A deep sense of meaning and purpose

• Living according to your values

• Continued growth throughout life

• Finding fulfillment during both opportunities and adversity

Flourishing = functioning very well.

Thriving = flourishing plus reaching your fullest potential and deepest fulfillment.

What is psychologyical wellbeing according to Carol Ryff

Is firmly rooted in eudaimonic well-being (you-di-mon-ick)

• Autonomy means having the ability to think and act in ways that are consistent with your personal values; having confidence in your opinions.

• Environmental mastery means having a sense of competence in the environment and using available opportunities and resources to effectively meet your needs and values. It means feeling like you are in control of where you live and feeling like you can manage the demands of everyday life.

• Personal growth means having the ability to grow and improve in ways that reflect your knowledge about yourself.

• Purpose in life means having goals and direction in life and having the belief that life has meaning.

• Self-acceptance (often referred to as unconditional self-acceptance) means having a positive regard for yourself. It means that not only do you recognize your strengths and limitations, but that you are okay with them. It means that you realize, and accept, that you are not perfect and that you are okay with your limitations.

• Positive relations with others means having warm and trusting relationships with others, caring about others, and having the capacity for empathy and intimacy.

CBT

The cognative Triangle

Thoughts: What we think affects how we feel and act.

Emotions: How we feel affects what we think and do.

Behaviour: What we do affects how we think and feel.

Experts in cognitive psychology have identified 10 common patterns in thinking that decrease psychological well-being. What are they called and what are they?

Mind Traps

1. All or nothing thinking: seeing things in black or white terms (e.g., thinking that the whole day is ruined because one small thing didn't go well in the morning)

2. Overgeneralization: seeing a single negative event as a pattern (e.g., assuming that you will get a low grade on a course after receiving one low grade in the week 2 quiz)

3. Mental filter: similar to overgeneralization, this occurs when focusing on one negative characteristic even though there were several positive ones (e.g., when an instructor focuses on the three negative course evaluations even though the other 35 course evaluations were overwhelmingly positive)

4. Discounting the positive: telling yourself that positive events don't really count (e.g., telling yourself that the excellent grade you got on your English assignment doesn't really count because it was an easy assignment)

5. Jumping to conclusions: also called mind-reading or fortune-telling, this means drawing conclusions in the absence of evidence (e.g., assuming that your next job interview will go poorly because the last one didn't go well)

6. Magnification: exaggerating the negative and minimizing the positive (e.g., after delivering a strong presentation to the class, you dwell on the one small error you made, and, as a result, you can't celebrate the positive aspects of your presentation)

7. Emotional reasoning: drawing conclusions about how things are based on how you feel (e.g., because you feel shy and nervous to be working for a supervisor who has won several awards, you conclude that your supervisor doesn't want to hear your opinions)

8. "Should" statements: saying things, or people, 'should'/'must' be a certain way (e.g., telling yourself "I must get As in all of my courses")

9. Labelling: attaching a label to yourself or someone else, instead of describing a behaviour (e.g., telling your friend that you are not smart, rather than telling them that you don't understand a concept in your Statistics class)

10. Personalization and blame: holding yourself or others to blame for things that are not within your/their control (e.g., thinking that you are to blame for your team losing a soccer game, because you missed the chance to score a goal)

All or nothing thinking

Seeing things in black or white. there is no spectrum, it’s either good or bad.

All-or-nothing thinking is about categories.

The brain sees only two options:

• Success or failure

• Good or bad

• Perfect or worthless

• Smart or stupid
  
  It’s 100% or nothing.
  
  “I didn’t get 100% of my exam so I failed”
  “I missed a workout, so I ruined my exercie routine”
  “I was rejected from one school so I’ll never go to college”

Overgeneralizations

One event becomes the rule.

Viewing a single negative event as a pattern (e.g., assuming that you will get a low grade on a course after receiving one low grade in the week 2 quiz)

All or noting “I got a 70% on th exam so I failed”

Gneralization “I got a 70% on the exam so I probably won’t be good at any course moving forawrd”

Mental Filter

Only choosing to see the negative.

20 people compliment you but you only notice the one person who hated it “I suuck becasue one person hated it”

I got 100% on 9/10 exams but I got a 60% on one, so I must be stupid.

Similar to overgeneralization, this occurs when focusing on one negative characteristic even though there were several positive ones (e.g., when an instructor focuses on the three negative course evaluations even though the other 35 course evaluations were overwhelmingly positive)

Discouting the positive

You refuse to let positive evidence count.
Telling yourself that positive events don't really count

(e.g., telling yourself that the excellent grade you got on your English assignment doesn't really count because it was an easy assignment)

"I only got the job because they were desperate."

"I only got an A because the test was easy."

"They're only complimenting me to be nice."

"My professor probably gives everyone high marks."

No positive evidence is allowed into your self-image.

Jumping to conclusions

Jumping to conclusions: also called mind-reading or fortune-telling, this means drawing conclusions in the absence of evidence (e.g., assuming that your next job interview will go poorly because the last one didn't go well)

Magnification

Exaggerating the negative and minimizing the positive (e.g., after delivering a strong presentation to the class, you dwell on the one small error you made, and, as a result, you can't celebrate the positive aspects of your presentation)

Emotional reasoning

Drawing conclusions about how things are based on how you feel (e.g., because you feel shy and nervous to be working for a supervisor who has won several awards, you conclude that your supervisor doesn't want to hear your opinions

Should staements

Saying things, or people, 'should'/'must' be a certain way (e.g., telling yourself "I must get As in all of my courses")

Labeling

Attaching a label to yourself or someone else, instead of describing a behaviour (e.g., telling your friend that you are not smart, rather than telling them that you don't understand a concept in your Statistics class

Personalization and blame

Holding yourself or others to blame for things that are not within your/their control (e.g., thinking that you are to blame for your team losing a soccer game, because you missed the chance to score a goal)

What is thinking about thinking?

Metacognition

is necessary in order to become aware of destructive thinking patterns

The process of changing unhelpful thought patterns is known as

Cogantive re-framing or cognative restructuring

Strategies for changing unhepful thought patterns

ABCD method invloves examining and changing automatic thoughts.

Active Event This is the situation or event that prompted the automatic thoughts and 'thinking traps'.

Belief In this step, you identify the cognitive distortions ('thinking traps') that you have about the situation.

Consequence In this step you ask yourself “What is the result of holding those beliefs about the event?”

Dispute This is where you dispute, or challenge, the beliefs and develop other ways of thinking about the event.

Give examples of ABCD

A - You take a psychlogy exam and don’t do well.

B - You believe that noving forward you will do poorly in all psychology courses

C - You no longer take psychlogy classes.

D - You challenge the belief.

Fixed minset vs. Growth mindset

Finding solutions instead of not doing something.

“I’m not god at writing but I want to do well in school, so I’ll learn how to write so I can do well”
vs.
“I’m not good at writing, so I won’t try because I’ll never be good at writing”

Learned optimisim

You can learn to be optimistic, positive and happy.

Optimisim is a skill and is learned.

Leanred Helplessness

Pesimism is also learned.

Past experiences dicate how people react moving forward.

Exploratory style

A concept from positive psychology.

Explanatory style refers to the habitual way people explain why good or bad things happen to them.

It’s made up of the three P’s

Personalization: Is it me (internal) or is it not me (external)? Who is responsible?

Permanence: How long will this last? Is it temporary or permanent? Does it always happen or does it not always happen?

Pervasiveness: Is this specific or universal? How much of my life does this affect? Does it affect everything in my life (i.e., it is global) or does it affect one specific area of my life (i.e., it is specific)?

Personalization

You either make it personal or external.

Optimist: I failed the exam but I didn’t study enough and we didn’t go over that material in the review.

Pessimist: I failed the exam so I’m stupid.

Postive example:

Optimist “I prepared for the interview and I got the job”

Pesimisst: “I got the job but probably becasue I got lucky”

Permanance

How long will it last? Is it peranent or temporary.

Optimist “I usally do well at work, so it makes sense that I got a good review”
Pessimisst: “It’s a one off, I got lucky”

The rational is that it’s temporary and won’t last.

Optimist see good things as perminant.
Pessismist view things as temporary and obscure.

Pervasivness

Pervasiveness: Is this specific or universal? How much of my life does this affect? Does it affect everything in my life (i.e., it is global) or does it affect one specific area of my life (i.e., it is specific)?

Something bas happens so you assume you’re bad at everything vs. thinking “That didn’t go well, but other things are going well”

Self Regulation

Self-regulation refers to how we manage the stresses that we are under.

Procrastination

Related to low self regulation.

Cause: A task being uninteresting or too challenging or a long timeline.

When is procrastintion more likely?

• The individual has a tendency to prioritize feeling good over feeling uncomfortable (i.e., "give in to feel good" (Pychyl, 2010, p. 20)).

• The individual has anxiety or apprehension about the outcome of completing the task.

• The individual lacks confidence in their ability to successfully complete the task.

• The individual has a fear of failure.

• The individual holds misconceptions, such as the belief that they'll feel more like doing the task tomorrow. Research shows that people are not good at forecasting how they'll feel in the future (Pychyl, 2010).

• The individual has a low level of time-management and planning skills. Underestimating the amount of time required to complete a future task, despite past evidence, is known as the planning fallacy.

Procrastination is most often due to poor self regulation.

Strategies to increases self regulation: The 5 steps of self regulation.

The “Shanker method” made up of 5 parts:

1. Read the signs and reframe the behaviour: Ask yourself “Is this behaviour caused by me being overwhelmed or by stress” “I’m procrastinating; is it because I’m lazy or stressed becasue I have 4 exams coming up?”

2. Recognize the stressor: What is causing the stress? “I have 4 exams coming up and feel overwhelmed”

3. Reduce the Stress: Which stressors can you change? How can you re-frame the stress?

4. Reflect - Enhance stress awarness: Ask yourself - "How do I feel when I'm stressed?" and "What does it feel like when I'm feeling calm?"

5. Restor Energy: What can I do to restore my energy? Eat health, cut out alcohol, sleep more, meditate, time block.

Method 2 for increasing self regulation: Strengthen Metacognitive Skills