Background
As opposed to a pathological orientation, positive psychology advocates the use of individuals’ own strength and resources to combat against life challenges. Integrating the experiential learning theory and the positive education framework, positive psychology is applied to the ex-patients with mental health problems in half-way houses. Half-way houses provide a transitional period of residential care to facilitate people in recovery to achieve an optimal level of functioning for community reintegration.
Objectives
The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of the positive psychology intervention in promoting character strengths, positive emotions, relationship, accomplishment and purpose of life of the ex-patients with mental health problems in half-way houses. Intervention follows the learning pedagogy of “learning, living, reflecting, conceptualizing, applying, and embedding”.
Methods
Training sessions were delivered for the staff of the houses to familiarize them with the concepts and application of positive psychology. A quasi-experimental pre-post comparison research design was adopted. Qualitative study was conducted to examine the project effectiveness more in-depth. Positive psychology groups aiming to promote character strengths, growth mindset, positive relationship, self-compassion and gratitude, sense of hope were conducted for 38 ex-mental patients in four half-way houses. A total of eight one-hour sessions were run for each group. Each group consisted of about eight members. The session plans will be introduced in the presentation. Positive psychology programs were also integrated in the house activities, e.g. game booths, family workshops, house meetings, house decoration, character strength theme activities, video clip production, mutual sharing and identification of character strengths.
Results and conclusion
Results indicated that the ex-patients with mental health problems showed significant improvement in character strength use and gratitude. Positive psychology intervention is thus supported to be effective for the ex-patients in half-way houses.