Integrative Positive Psychology Paper

Research has suggested that cardiac patients benefit from positive psychology interventions since they are often experiencing depression, anxiety, and negative affect. American Heart Association has acknowledged the association between depression and worse prognosis following acute coronary syndrome due to possible nonadherence to lifestyle changes. As I mentioned earlier, positive psychological constructs, such as optimism, positivity are related to less cases of hospitalization, adherence to prescribed medication, and consequently reduced mortality and secondary complications in patients with chronic diseases. Some studies also show that the same positive constructs play a positive role in patients with heart diseases. Specifically, individuals

with positive traits have better adherence to a heart-healthy diet, exercising (Huffman et al., 2016). Interestingly, Huffman et al., found that optimism, possibly due to its' stability as a trait, was less responsive to positive cardiac outcomes (2016). Nevertheless, researcher concluded that during critical times, positive psychology interventions have favorable effects on positive affect and mood disorders.
Even though optimism was not associated with changes in cardiac patients, some interesting results were found in study with individuals with Parkinson's disease. Literature suggests that optimism is a positive trait that is related to good health outcomes, increased well-being, since it buffers effects of stress. However, patients with Parkinson's disease differ in how they cope with the illness depending on the level of optimism they have. Specifically, those who have high optimism do worse than those with medium levels of optimism. Scientists speculate that patients with very high levels of optimism probably minimize outcomes of their illness, take less action to improve their situation and overall well-being, which consequently causes more depression and distress at later stages of the illness. Despite this controversy, higher levels of optimism rather than lower ones help patients to hold positive attitudes towards their illness, and consequently deal better with mental and physical health outcomes. Thus, interventions should probably target optimism but not illness perception. Hurt et al., noted that there were some interventions that targeted optimism (2014). These studies explored the meaning of emotional responses to the disease in relation to future hopes and past events. Researchers suggested that these interventions were beneficial because they focused on the understanding how the illness affects individual's life, enhance adjustment to the disease, also meaningful coping, what consequently led to increased optimism in patients with Parkinson's disease.

Conclusions

Generally the clinical psychology field emphasizes traditional approach in treating patients with chronic illneses.

However, emerging evidence show that positive psychology interventions are quite effective for individuals suffering from mental and physical disorders. The findings provided in this paper have significant implications for clinical practice and therapeutic interventions for patients with a variety of chronic diseases since most of them are lifelong and debilitating, causing many psychological problems. Integrative positive psychology allows practitioners and scholars to study positive and negative well-being together, as well as apply the findings into the clinical settings. I argue that looking at the research results, the use of positive psychology interventions, such as well-being therapy, cognitive restructuring, positive reappraisal, groups interventions based on positive psychology principles within populations of individuals suffering from chronic illnesses and/or disability should be effective and could lead to positive treatment outcomes. I believe that the goal of positive interventions should be focused on helping individuals with pessimism and hopelessness develop positive attitudes of illness and/or disability to maximize adaptation and psychological

well-being.