Well-being After Psychopathology Research

Well-being After Psychopathology: A Transformational Research Agenda

• Mental disorders affect millions globally, impacting various life areas like work, education, relationships, and self-perception, according to the WHO (2017).
• The study examines if psychopathology limits potential or if recovery fosters greater well-being

Gaps in Existing Research:

• Clinical research focuses on alleviating symptoms rather than promoting thriving.
• Mental health interventions often fail to measure positive outcomes.
• Individuals with mental illness often report lower well-being even after symptom subside.
• Studies often omit tracking of well-being post-mental illness.
• Depression treatment trials lack long-term quality-of-life metrics.
• Longitudinal studies require significant resources, leading to a focus on short-term outcomes.
• Some researchers are skeptical, assuming good outcomes are rare due to relapse rates, and many recover outside treatment misleading clinical studies.

Evidence of Thriving After Mental Illness:

• 10% of individuals with prior depression thrived a decade later.
• 1 in 7 suicide attempt survivors thrived after seven years.
• Panic disorder exhibited thriving rates similar to depression.
• Generalized anxiety disorder had the lowest thriving rates.

Factors Promoting Well-Being After Mental Illness:

• Psychological well-being includes life satisfaction, self-acceptance, and purpose.
• Positive emotional regulation strategies are also important.
• Social support is critical within the cultural, community, and family context.
• Stigma and cultural expectations impact recovery.
• Treatment variables, like certain therapies (e.g., cognitive-behavioral therapy), enhance well-being beyond symptom relief.
• Interventions should aim for positive life outcomes beyond just symptom reduction.

Social Interactions & Relationships:

• High-quality relationships predict better well-being outcomes.
• Acts of kindness may improve mental health more than symptom-focused treatments.

Personal Goals & Projects:

• Engagement in meaningful activities enhances life satisfaction.
• Goal-directed behavior aids transition from illness to well-being.

Habits & Self-Regulation:

• Developing wellness-promoting daily habits is crucial.
• Self-control and resilience are important in long-term recovery.

Emotional & Cognitive Resources:

• Positive emotions and adaptive coping mechanisms help sustain well-being.
• Practices like gratitude improve mental health outcomes.

Genetic & Temperamental Factors:

• Innate resilience enables some to thrive post-illness.
• Biological predispositions may cause struggle for others.

Proposed Mental Health Agenda:

• Expand measurement of outcomes beyond symptom reduction.
• Track real-world improvements.
• Use self-reported well-being and objective measures.

Mental Health Research Improvement:

• Incorporate positive-functioning variables to predict long-term outcomes.
• Better prediction models will help identify people needing additional support.

Connection between Science and Societal Priorities:

• Mental health research should align with patient values, aiming for greater life satisfaction and fulfillment.
• Policy should focus on increasing well-being, not just reducing mental illness prevalence.

Strategies to Promote Mental Health:

• Explore interventions that foster purpose, gratitude, social connection, and meaning-making.
• Shift focus from reducing suffering to increasing well-being.

Dispositional Optimism (Carver and Scheier)

• Optimism involves expectancies about future outcomes.
• Optimists exert effort towards goals, while pessimists disengage.
• Initial studies linked optimism with health outcomes, later expanding to social relationships.

Theoretical Background:

• Rooted in expectancy-incentive theories, measured by the Life Orientation Test (revised in 1994).
• Hope includes belief in ability to achieve goals.
• Attributional Style explains past events.
• Self-Efficacy focuses on confidence in specific tasks.
• Trait Stability is generalized and stable.

Optimism within Personality:

• Thought to be a mix of low neuroticism and high extraversion, later suggested to overlap with agreeableness and conscientiousness.
• Optimism may be just the absence of pessimism, or are they separate dimensions.
• Optimism and pessimism may have different influences in some studies.

Optimism and Goal Pursuit:

• Optimists persist when facing obstacles, pessimists disengage or experience distress.
• Optimism predicts college retention and long-term career success.
• Optimists prioritize high-value goals and disengage from low-priority goals, thus engaged in treatment programs if deemed personally important.

Optimism in Relationships:

• Optimists have better social networks and relationship satisfaction.
• Optimists are more constructive during conflicts, leading to less marital decline.
• Optimists have a higher perceived social support.
• Optimists have larger and higher quality social networks.
• Optimists see their relationships positively and work harder on them.
• Optimists are warm and dominant, which leads to greater relationship satisfaction.
• Optimists are less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior.
• Parents with high optimism provide better nurturing.

Optimism as a Mental Orientation:

• Optimists visualize positive future events more vividly
• Optimists show differences in attentional processes - Stoop task and emotional stroop test
• Compared to pessimists, optimists show an attentional preference for positive information.
• In eye tracking studies optimists focus on non-negative information.
• Optimists are mentally disengaged from pain

Resilience to Pain and Stress:

• Stronger placebo responses to pain relief.
• Pessimists tend to catastrophize pain.

Mental Health:

• Protects against anxiety and suicidal ideation.
• Helps maintain life satisfaction despite unemployment.
• Optimists are more likely to use active coping strategies.

Health Behaviors:

• More likely to engage in exercise, eat healthy diets, and avoid smoking.

Biological Markers:

• Lower inflammation, better lipid profiles, and adaptive sleep patterns under normal conditions.
• Lower risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke with faster recovery post-surgery, that is lower mortality rates.

Optimism impact on Mortality:

• Those who scored in the top third had a 55% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality
• Those in high optimism had decreased mortality rate

Optimists vs Pessimists:

• Optimists are more likely than pessimists to engage in proactive health behaviors.

Potential Downsides of Optimism:

• More likely to continue betting after losses.
• Slightly lower optimism correlates with better business performance.
• Could lead to unrealistic decision-making.

Developing Optimism:

• Imagining one's best possible self can increase optimism over two weeks.
• Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) strategies help develop more optimistic thinking.
• Optimism is relatively stable but can shift due to major life events; interventions may help, but long-term change is difficult.

Learning Optimism:

• Engage in self-disputation to challenge pessimistic explanatory styles.
• A-B-C model - Adversity, Belief, Consequence
• Use Evidence, Alternatives, Implications, and Usefulness in disputations

Improving Negative Beliefs:

• By disputing negative beliefs we learn to be better self-disputers

Key unanswered questions on Optimism:

• What are its origins, neural mechanisms, and circumstances where optimism is harmful?
• The origins consist of some genetic components (heritability ~30%), possible parental modeling and childhood socio-economic factors.

Overall

• Optimism blends cognition (expectations), emotion (positive outlook), and motivation.

Lecture - Optimism and Pessimism

• Optimism entails expectations of positive future outcomes and explanations attributing bad events to external, temporary, and specific causes.

Understanding Optimism:

• Optimism means believing that good things will happen.
• Explaining the past for optimists involves externalizing blame.

Martin Seligman - Learned Helplessness:

• Dogs learned to be helpless after failing to escape shocks.

Explanatory style in three dimensions:

• A way of explaining events, determine degree of self-blame
• Addresses expectations about how long events will last
• Deals with how all-consuming the event will be

Positive Explanatory Style:

• "It's the circumstance"
• "It's temporary"
• "It doesn't affect anything else in their life"

Pessimistic Explanatory Style:

• "It's because of me or it's my fault"
• "It's permanent or long lasting"
• "This messes up everything"

Good Things Occur with "Optimistic Explanatory Style":

• "It must be because of me"
• "Its going to last a long time"
• "It positively affects everything else"

Good Things Occur with a Pessimistic Explanatory Style:

• "It was lucky. I had nothing to do with it”.
• "Enjoy it while it lasts; it won’t last long".
• "It makes no difference".

Silver Linings

• We react to the meaning we attach to those experiences
• Use negative visualization by wondering what things will be like if the good events in your life never happened.
• If we want to be happy and live longer, we need better reference points.

Guest Lecture - Positivity Resonance

• "Other people matter"
• Positive resonance has a fresh perspective on an age-old topic
• Love the relationship vs. love the emotion relating to relationship science

Emotional Science

• Composed of momentary lens
• Biological and behavioral components
• Incorporates theoretical backdrop
• Positivity resonance is an interpersonal moment marked by Increases in Shared positive emotions and affect Pleasant subjective experiment Caring nonverbal synchrony
• Coordinated expressions of mutual care Biological synchrony
• E.g. physiological linkage Positive resonance aims to characterize features of positive resonance and assess covariance

Positive Resonance Assessment

• Test longitudinal associations with health trajectories and longevity
• Has both mutual care and concern
• Shows coordinated movement that is similar in
  • Form (style/manner of movement)
  • Tempo (temporal rhythm of movements) Synchrony predicts "embodied rapport"

Positivity overtime builds

• Builds embodied rapport
• Builds social bonds
• Builds commitment, loyalty, and trust
• Perceived safety must be present together with real-time sensory connection (eyecontact)
• Positive resonance theory is affected by shared positive affect
• Caring nonverbal synchrony and biological synchrony will occur in an interpersonal level

Handbook on Emotions Fredrickson

• Scientific psychology has been slow to examine love
• Love has long been explored in philosophy, literature, and art
• Harry Harlow (1958) criticized psychology for failing to advance beyond poetic descriptions of love

Two Main Scientific Studies

• Developmental Science: Examines love in infancy and attachment
• Relationship Science: Explores romantic love and its psychological mechanisms
• Emotion science, by contrast, has largely overlooked love

Redefining Love as a Momentary Emotional State

• The focus from love as a stable trait to love as a momentary emotional state that can accumulate over time

Value of Positive Emotions

• The emerging science of positive psychology is coming to understand why it’s good to feel good
• Positive emotions can build resources

Positive Resources

• Develop problem-solving skills
• Learn new information
• Solidify bonds
• Make new bonds
• Develop coordination
• Develop strength and cardiovascular health
• Develop resilience and optimism
• Develop sense of identity and goal orientation

Positive Emotions and Health

• Greater positive emotion is associated with
  • Greater longevity
  • Lower risk of disease (e.g. cardiovascular, immune)
  • Reduced risk of fragility and functional decline
  • Slower disease progression

Love as an Emotion vs. a Relationship

• Traditional views of love define it as a lasting bond, Fredrickson argues that this bond emerges from repeated emotional moments
• The other constructs of love are desire, attachment, intimacy, and commitment are products of love that show the love-the-emotion to love itself
• Love is a transient, biologically grounded emotional experience

Positivity Resonance Co-Occurance

• Fredrickson defines love-the-emotion as a momentary state
• Love arises when two or more people experience a mutual positive emotional state This can include joy, gratitude, amusement, inspiration, or serenity

1. Mutual Care and Responsiveness

• Is an investment in the well-being of the other person
• Shown through acts of care, attention, and validation

Biobehavioral Synchrony

• Love is not just psychological but has physiological and behavioral components -Heart rate synchronization -Facial mimicry -Oxytocin synchrony

Love as a Dynamic System

• These three components interact in a self-reinforcing loop More frequently people experience positivity resonance, the stronger their social bonds become Builds trust, loyalty, and deep relational connections Over time, long-term experiences contribute to love

Evidence from Emotion Science

Traditional emotion theories have debated whether love is a distinct emotion or a blend of others

Relationship Science

• Relationship scientists classify love into types Companionate love (friendship-based) Romantic love (passionate, sexual) Compassionate love (selfless concern) Attachment love (parent-child bonding)

Fredrickson Suggests

• Infant seek out behavioral synchrony with caregivers and are distressed when caregivers stop reciprocating positive emotions

Preconditions for Love

• Love requires safety to arise. Anxitey, lonelieness, etc. can stop love
• Connection requires real-time physical interaction Eye contact Touch Vocal tone and laughter

Well-Being

Fredrickson presents evidence that love contributes to mental, emotional, and physical health - love results in a more resilient, happier and healthier life High levels of positivity resonance predict lower inflammation and better immune function

Benefit of Social

• It strengths community by means of cooperation and trust

How to strengthen relationships

strengthen by - prioritizing social connection and communal dining, but through cultivating daily micro-moments of love and appreciation

Mindfulness and Love

• Loving kindness meditation enhance people's capacity for resonance and improves cardio health

Ursula LeGuin Quote

Love is not fixed and therefore must be remade over and over

What is Defensive Pessimism?

Is more of a strategy people use who are not overly pessimistic a strategy, rather than an explanatory style

What if we made defensive pessimists more optimistic?

• Would reduce performance to use one condition over the other Anxiety can lead to a “cognitive narrowing,” but defense allows you to do good planning when anxious

What if we try to get defense pesimists to think positively?

• Just don't do it, its counter-productive

W.O.O.P

• Wish
• Outcome
• Obstacle
• Plan

Reading: Defensive Pessimism

DP-Cognitive strategy used by anxious individuals

• Mentally simulate everything that could go wrong to prepare for those challenges
• Associated with motivation, regulation, personality

DP Definition

• Strategy that channels anxiety into problem solving
• Focuses on the future and improving goals-DP is goal-oriented
• DP is used in a high-stakes and specific scenario

How DP works

• Used to avoid a negative scenario from happening
• Anxiety is a motivator-results in proactive behavior

DP Negatives

Can cause stress and mental fatigue If over used, can create negative habits Cannot work in a low-risk situation

DP Vs other strategies

DP-Low expectations-focus on managing negatives SA-High Expectations-focuses on positive thinking DP does have increased stress, but good adaptation; SA-has decreased stress with environment specificity

Cultural

The usefulness results from the social group

Effectiveness

DP is effective for those who are anxious in structured, high-stakes environments

Forcing optimisim

Forcing optimism can make DP worse and increase pressure and anxiety

Freedom and Choice Lecture

• Happiness is the freedom to choose
• People are less decisive and satisfied with more choices

Problems w. Choice

• Decisions are delayed
• Quality is still worse
• Results in low satisfaction

Why is it miserable? Due to

• Regret
• Opportunity cost
• Escalation of options/expectations
• Blame

The real trick to freedom

• Constrain, not liberate
• Attention to specifics, not all at once

Reading- Does Choice Mean Freedom and Wellbeing

• Challenges the assumption that choice equates to freedom and wellbeing
• Cultural variations are not universal and not always associated with independence

American Culture

Believes that choice leads to wellbeing

• The individual is not universal
• Focus on adapting to societal roles rather than individual choice

Class in Experience of Choice

Working class more likely to prioritize putting in and group than expressing individual

Choice Overwhelms

High level of stress/anxiety; more blame toward self too, since the choice and fault are self-inflicted

Choice in Modern Western Identity

It is shaped by personal choices, results in more pressure on self + the abandonment of religion and social structure

Study of Airports

Show that some cultures put less emphasis on putting their personality on display

Study on Children Puzzles

Culture always influences choice impact on motivaiton

Study: Pen Choices in Airports + Cultural

• E. Americans prefer the unique pen Asian Americans conformed and prefered the non-unique

Social Class

Working prefers to do what they think is beneficial to others instead of to just themselves

• Not only do they feel less entitled in choices, they are responsible to others

Katrina Study

"Adjusting" is more to blame to others

Choice: Implications and future

Too much is not good, there are detrimental effects Want a blend-can't be too rigid, can't be too free

A Wonderful Life Reading

• Experiential is worth more than materialistic:

Experiences provide greatest good due to a combo of factors

1. social
2. Self
3. Compare

Hedonic Impact

Reports that experiences have had higher and longer satisfaction to compare to material; less regret too

What this experience is (Psy)

More habitual More memory Social influence is high

What do purchases build

Relationship builds with memories

Experiences Shape What Others See

More generous and enjoy conversations more

The more someone is likely to do what:

The better they feel. But a person not showing who they are causes the decline of a sense of self.

Social Compare in Experience

If they cant' then it is not as valuable; the study shows that they like it less!

Money and Experienc

More tolerance when expected outcome in experiences than material

The conclusion is

Society should focus on public purchases!

Money and Time Lecture

There is some correlation btwn happiness and money, but not what is intuitively supposed

There is a thershold

$75,000, then the correlation is not super high

Why do we suffer in freedom

Close relationships make us way happier too, with greater power and capacity, as well as the proper constraints

Where do spend money or time

1. By experiences - better connect more with more social influence2.
2. Make it a treat - limits its access-it builds value and is very intimate
3. Buy Time!