Dear All
Happy New Year! I hope you have had a restful holiday period and are geared up for 2010!
I wanted to discuss with you some recent research in the Positive Psychology field.
Longitudinal research by Professor Emmy Werner over last two decades has firmly established that poverty, having substance dependent parents and being abused do not necessarily produce damaged children and adults.
Although the chances of damage are higher, a third of children studied showed no evidence of problems. Of the remaining two-thirds, psychological difficulties usually developed during adolescence but then markedly declined or disappeared in their 30s and 40s.
It appears that protective factors (or their absence) are much more important than risk factors in determining people's mental health and that the skills of "framing" and "reframing" are central in this.
Most significantly, it also appears that people can be taught such skills both before (as a protective measure) and afterwards (as therapy). The Penn Resilience Program (PRP) developed by Professor Marty Seligman, is just one application of its use which has been extensively evaluated over the last 16 years and has been found to significantly reduce a range of problems - from depression to criminality.
The forthcoming SDS workshops on Positive Therapy - http://www.skillsdevelopment.co.uk/seminars.php?courseid=52 - will be examining the question of building clients' resilience along with other practical applications from the positive psychology field. I am looking forward to working with you and am sure that these events will be stimulating for all of us.
However, I also welcome any of your thoughts on the topic prior to then. It will help us to shape the discussion on the course around the most practical issues as perceived by you.
References:
Resilience: A Universal Capacity (2004) www.wested.org/online_pubs/resiliency/resiliency.chap1.pdf
Cardemil, E.V., Reivich, K.J., Beevers, C.G., Seligman, M.E.P., & James, J. (2007). The prevention of depressive symptoms in low-income, minority children: Two-year follow-up. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 313-327
Kind Regards
Paul Grantham
Consultant Clinical Psychologist
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Tuesday 5 January 2010
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This is our first attempt to join the exciting world of blogging and bring to you all the fresh and hot news about the world of psychology and, of course, about your favourite training company. This is our new enterprise and we are finding our way in this mysterious world of blogging cautiously (but surely...) :-)
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We are hoping to move our popular SDS Delegate Debate into this blogging format in the future and looking forward to lively discussions here with you. We are planning to start with publishing already existing SDS Delegate Debates — with comments received from you. Then we'll move to the current news as well as will run new delegate debates there.
Feel free to leave comments to any of the posts — whether they are old debates, the news or new debates. As you can guess — every blogger loves his readers and LIVES for the comments. :-) We are just the same. You don’t need to register in order to be able to comment. You can leave your feedback as “Anonymous”, however, may we ask you to sign you name (or nick) at the end of your comment (even if you are commenting without logging in) so that we know how to address you.
Another useful tool that SDS Blog provides us with is availability of Polls that enable us to find out your views about various subjects. Polls are located on the left panel of the page and updated regularly. Please feel free to vote. You can see the results of each poll by clicking the button "Results".
If you wish to register — nothing can be easier — you just open a Google account — most of you, surely, already use one.
Your comments are read by SDS Consultants regularly and — in many cases — replied to.
The blog is moderated — mainly to protect you and other readers from spam and irrelevant comments.
All posts are tagged — hopefully it'll help you to find your way around there.
Wish us luck and please join the list of our followers.
Hello Paul
ReplyDeleteJust a quick note, I was most interested to read this and my immediate thought was how framing and reframing works successfully with counselling with disabled people and how in a sense this also links to the Social Model of Disability which certainly builds resilience amongst disabled people who learn to embrace it.
This may be an interesting link area for you?
I am also hoping to look at developing counselling for parents of disabled children in my disability organisation in the near future and any thoughts you have on your courses which might address this work would be appreciated. Or any particular work in this field you are aware of.
Kind regards
D.N., Counselling Coordinator