Positive Psychology and Mental Health

In recent years, people all around the world have been experiencing negative energies & problems in life. This is a global epidemic now because negative psychology is not only affecting people’s lives but their mental health too. When you’ve negative psychology, you tend to have foggy thoughts and your decision-making capabilities become ambiguous. It can also affect your self-confidence, enthusiasm, self-awareness, and overall mental health. While, positive psychology is connected to happiness, talents, skills, better relationships, and superior personality. There have been medical studies that link positive psychology to better mental health but first, let’s learn more about it.

What Is Positive Psychology?

Positive Psychology (PP) is the branch of psychology that analyzes the best of people and their experiences. The main purpose of PP is to create a balance between everything in life including problems, solutions, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Thus, it emphasizes finding solutions to the problems & fixing the things that need to be fixed in life. Along with that, it also emphasizes on making life better even when everything seems to be fine. Positive Psychology is aimed at making a person feel happy, fulfilled, self-aware, and mentally healthy. The main theory of PP is that problems can be solved better by understanding your own strengths, qualities, and power of society.

4 Components Of Positive Psychology

PP can be further divided into 4 major components for better understanding.

Positive Individual Experiences (PIE) – As the name suggests, PIE refers to the life experiences that are positive in nature. These include joyfulness, fulfillment, pleasure, and flow of life. All these help in providing relaxation and a stress-free environment to an individual. Thus, positive mental health is triggered by all these optimistic experiences.

Positive Personal Characteristics (PPC)

Positive Personal Characteristics refer to all the good qualities an individual possesses. These qualities include the strengths of personality, skills, desires, and ethics. When an individual is well aware of his PPC, he doesn’t get affected by negative opinions or experiences. Moreover, an individual with PPC stays calm in pressure situations to find the best solution always.

Positive Interpersonal Connections (PIC) – Positive Interpersonal Connections refer to the optimistic relations that you have with people. People include your family, friends, life partner, colleagues, & everyone else you know personally. When you have positive relations, you tend to have a better understanding and stronger bonds. Furthermore, it helps you to stay stronger as you get more support from the people in your life. Consequently, you tend to get less stressed and stay mentally healthy always.

Positive Institutions (PI)– Positive Institutions refer to the positive environment and learning you get at different institutional places. These places include home, school, office, college, and other societal sites. Positive Institutions help in improving your personality, problem-solving skills, interpersonal relations, career & way of living. Thus, your mental health is improved when all these things work flawlessly in your life.

Connection Between Positive Psychology & Mental Health

Several medical studies have proven that positive psychology helps in improving the mental health of an individual greatly. There is a long list of mental health benefits that are linked to PP, some of which are listed below.

Positive Emotions – Positive Emotions consist of different feelings like happiness, admiration, pleasure, love, enthusiasm, and free will. Positive Psychology helps in highlighting all these feelings to make you feel good about everything. Moreover, you tend to understand everything more comprehensively to find a positive viewpoint in all situations. Thus, the mental health of a person is improved greatly with positive emotions into play.

Life Fulfillment – A person with positive psychology always tends to analyze the quality of life in a positive manner. This means that an individual looks at all the negative and positive points of life to evaluate it. The entire focus of an optimistic person is on the positive points and the ways to fix the negative ones. Thus, the person doesn’t get mentally upset or depressed about every problematic situation.

Optimism

Optimism means staying positive in all kinds of situations and anticipating the best probable result in all kinds of situations. When you are psychologically positive, optimism automatically becomes one of your mental traits. Thus, you don’t tend to get anxious or stressed about problems instead, you find a solution out of them.

Forgiveness – Forgiveness is one of the biggest strengths of a calm & sane mind. Whenever we are let down or cheated by someone close to us, we often become stressed & vengeful. But with positive psychology, we can learn to forgive others, and live a satisfactory & fulfilled life. Thus, the art of forgiveness helps in keeping our minds healthier, sane, and stress-free.

Self-Regulation – Self-Regulation is a person’s ability to consciously manage his personal thoughts, actions, and emotions to achieve life goals. Hence, this is how a person can monitor his own behavior, situations, and inspiration to construct a desirable life. Moreover, it helps in keeping the mind relaxed and ready during tough situations. Thus, we are able to learn & evolve through self-regulation in life.

Meaningful Life

When a person is psychologically positive, he always finds the purpose and meaning of his life. Many times, we go through very rough phases in life and feel like there’s nothing good in life. But with a positive mind, you always find the purpose, importance, and fulfillment in life. Therefore, you tend to have good mental health always.

Better Social Life – When you have positive psychology, you are always good at social interactions and relationships. This is because you don’t react to everything but instead, you analyze & find the best responses. With better understanding, every relationship is surely going to work better. When you have healthy social relationships, you always tend to be stress-free with a healthy mind.

Helpfulness – Being helpful and kind to others is one of the biggest personality strengths of people. When you’re psychologically positive, you feel like helping others by volunteering in social activities. Further, medical studies have shown that volunteering helps in fighting depression, nervousness, rage, and tension. Moreover, it makes you feel happier and more self-confident. Thus, you are more likely to have a healthier mind.

Energetic & Enthusiastic Nature

Being psychologically positive helps in keeping you energetic and enthusiastic always. When you are full of energy and enthusiast, you tend to live life to the fullest. Both these qualities help in improving your personal as well as professional lives. Thus, your mind is always peaceful & balanced about everything.

 Spiritualism – With positive psychology, you are more involved in spiritualism and religiousness. Both these qualities help you stay calm & positive always as you feel connected to something bigger than us. Hence, this helps us to stay hopeful in all kinds of situations. Ultimately, our mind becomes stronger and healthier as we go through life experiences.

The Bottom Line

Hence, these were the top 10 connections between positive psychology and mental health. Furthermore, positive Psychology is very important to live a happy, fulfilled, and a great life. It helps in improving professional & personal relations while keeping your mind sane & healthy. Various medical studies have shown that psychologically positive people are more successful & live a longer life.