From therapy to daily life of a depressed adolescent: Crossing psychopathology and optimal functioning

First published online: 30 November 2017Recently, scientific literature has seen significant development and evaluation of several positive psychology interventions. However, there are still lacking studies that evaluate the efficacy of this type of interventions in clinically depressed adolescents. This paper aims to demonstrate the preliminary results of a new therapy implemented to a 14-year-old female adolescent diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder: the Optimal Functioning Therapy for Adolescent. This therapy seeks to promote adolescents’ optimal functioning by reducing depressive symptoms and increasing well-being. The innovation of this therapy lies in the integration of techniques from Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and Positive Psychology Interventions. The assessment of this therapy was made using retrospective and real-time or ecological measures (Experience Sampling Method – Csikszentmihalyi and Larson in Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175, 526–536, 1987) in three moments: baseline; post-intervention; and 4-month follow-up. Retrospective results showed improvement in positive trait characteristics and elimination of depressive symptoms maintained until follow-up. Real-time results showed the benefits of the therapy on the participant’s daily life regarding external contexts (increased engagement and diversification of activities, places, and companies) and state characteristics (increase in positive mood and self-satisfaction, and a decrease in the negative mood), maintained until follow-up. The Optimal Functioning Therapy for Adolescents contributed to the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder and optimal functioning enhancement.(undefined)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Personality and risk:Beyond daredevils-Risk taking from a temperament perspective

We reviewed studies relating risk taking to personality traits. This search long has been elusive due to the large number of definitions of risk and to the variety of personality traits associated with risk taking in different forms and domains. In order to reconcile inconsistent findings, we categorized risk taking measures into self-report behavior inventories, self-report trait-based scales, and choice-based tasks. Likewise, we made a distinction between specific risk-related traits (e.g., sensation seeking, impulsivity) and more general traits (e.g., the Big Five). Sensation seeking aspects like thrill and experience seeking were more strongly associated with recreational and social risks that trigger emotional arousal. Impulsivity was associated with ethical, health safety, gambling, and financial risk taking, due to disregard of future consequences and to lack of self-control. Among the Big Five, extraversion and openness to experience were associated with risk seeking; whereas conscientiousness and agreeableness had more established links with risk aversion. Neuroticism facets, like anxiety and worry, had negative relationships with risk seeking; other facets, like anger and depression, promoted risk seeking. We concluded that the notion of a unidimensional “risk taking” trait seems misleading. The interplay of many traits encompassed in an overarching temperament model best represented personality-risk relations. Positive emotionality traits promoted risky behaviors that confer an emotionally rewarding experience to the person. Negative emotionality traits lead to heightened perceptions of danger, primarily motivating the avoidance of risk. The last disinhibition affected risk taking as a result of differences in self-control control acting upon momentary feelings and in self-interest. Potential applications for practitioners are also discussed