Life Stories and Mental Health: The Role of Identification Processes in Theory and Interventions

The goal of this article is to explore the relations between narratives and mental health from a psychological perspective. We argue that a process of identification with personal experiences underlies narrative structures that are known to be related to mental health. Overidentification and underidentification are described as general processes underlying mental health problems. Gerontological insights in reminiscence and life review and cognitive psychological studies on autobiographical memories validate this claim. Practical applications in mental health care provide even further evidence for the role of identification processes in mental health and how they can be targeted in intervention

Nudging socially isolated people towards well-being with the ‘Happiness Route’: design of a randomized controlled trial for the evaluation of a happiness-based intervention

Background:\ud The Happiness Route is an innovative intervention that uses a happiness-based approach for people with an accumulation of risk factors for low well-being: socially isolated people with health impairments and a low socioeconomic status. The goal of this intervention is to improve well-being by engaging participants in intrinsically motivated activities with methods from positive psychology. We hypothesize that the primary outcome measure, emotional, social and psychological well-being of participants of the Happiness Route, will increase in comparison to the traditional and commonly-used problem-based approach. Secondary outcome measures are health-related quality of life, psychosocial functioning and health care consumption. \ud \ud Methods and desig:\ud Participants will be socially isolated people with health problems and a low socioeconomic status. Participants will be recruited in ten Dutch communities and candidates will be signed up by intermediaries, professionals from the health and social sector. Randomly assigned, half of the participants will follow the Happiness Route and half of the participants will follow the active, problem-focused control group ‘Customized Care’. In total, 256 participants will be included. In both conditions, participants will receive counseling sessions from trained counselors. In the control group, participants will talk about their problems and the care they get and counselors help to optimize their care. In the Happiness Route, the counselor ask questions such as “How do you want to live your life?”. The intervention helps people to find their ‘passion’, i.e., a positive goal-engaged and intrinsically motivated activity. It enables them to follow their passion through by a once-only personal happiness budget (maximal €500). We use well-validated and reliable questionnaires to measure primary and secondary outcome measures at baseline, directly after the intervention and at a nine-month follow-up. \ud \ud Discussion:\ud Shortcomings of earlier intervention studies in positive psychology will be tackled with this study, such as having a target group who is especially vulnerable for low well-being. The practice-based setting is especially interesting, as it can give valuable insights in how positive psychology interventions work in practice, but can also give rise to several challenges

Wisdom and Well-being Across the Lifespan

Considered the pinnacle of psychosocial development, and the outcome of a long, well-lived life, wisdom ostensibly confers advantages to persons who possess it. Nevertheless, the relationship among wisdom, aging, and well-being is still not fully understood. This study investigated the relationship between wisdom and several measures of wellbeing across the lifespan. Participants included 186 male and 326 female Dutch adults ranging in age from 17 – 92 (M = 46.46, SD = 21.37) who completed measures of wisdom (Self-Assessed Wisdom Scale, Webster, 2010), personality (NEO-FFI, Costa & McCrae, 1992), mental health (Mental Health Continuum, Keyes et al., 2008) physical health (General Health Questionnaire, Goldberg, 1978), and a balanced time perspective (Balanced Time Perspective Scale, Webster, 2011). A series of 2 (wisdom) by 3 (age) ANOVA’s revealed main effects for both variables in support of hypotheses. Main study findings revealed that wisdom was unrelated to physical health but positively related to openness to experience, mental health, and a balanced time perspective. Overall, midlife adults scored higher on wisdom than either younger or older participants. Older adults scored lower on physical and mental health, openness, and the use of a balanced time perspective. The results are discussed from a lifespan perspective in which gains and losses contribute to conditions in which midlife adults show high levels of wisdom and well-being

Ego-integrity in the Second Half of Life

Relatively few empirical studies exist on Eriksons’ intriguing concept of ego-integrity. The present study examines ego-integrity, using the Northwestern Ego Integrity Scale (NEIS) in a Dutch study (55-95 years; N=163). The NEIS measures (1) ‘integrity’, i.e. drawing meaning from all life experiences and (2) ‘despair’, i.e. having regrets about the course of one’s life. Step-wise multivariate regression analyses show that ‘integrity’ is related to time perspective (reminiscence and hope) and mental health, whereas ‘despair’ is only related to personality characteristics (neuroticism and openness to experience). All relations hold in two age groups (55-74 versus 75-95 years). The study shows that the NEIS is a reliable and valid measure of ego integrity. As there is no evidence of age differences, ego integrity is an important concept across the second half of life. Given the pattern of relations, the promotion of meaning in life is an interesting target for psychosocial interventions

The Narrative Foreclosure Scale:Development and Psychometric Properties of a New Instrument Measuring Stagnation of Identity in Later Life

Narrative foreclosure is a new sensitizing concept for studying stagnation of identity development in later life. It is defined as the conviction that no new interpretations of one’s past, nor new commitments and experiences in one’s future are possible that can substantially change one’s life story. The Narrative Foreclosure Scale (NFS) was developed to study this concept empirically. The NFS comprises two subscales: Past and Future. The psychometric properties were studied in two samples of older adults (n=247 and n = 220). Confirmatory factor analyses confirm that the scale consists of two distinct factors. Internal consistencies are sufficient to good. The validity is further confirmed by the relationship with demographics and other psychological constructs, such as personality, hope, reminiscence, ego-integrity, balanced time perspective, wisdom, depression, and positive mental health. It is discussed that diminishing narrative foreclosure may be an important process factor in life-review and narrative therapy with older adults

Applying prosodic speech features in mental health care: An exploratory study in a life-review intervention for depression

The present study aims to investigate the application of prosodic speech features in a psychological intervention based on lifereview. Several studies have shown that speech features can be used as indicators of depression severity, but these studies are mainly based on controlled speech recording tasks instead of natural conversations. The present exploratory study investigated speech features as indicators of depression in conversations of a therapeutic intervention. The changes in the prosodic speech features pitch, duration of pauses, and total duration of the participant's speaking time were studied over four sessions of a life-review intervention for three older participants. The ecological validity of the dynamics observed for prosodic speech features could not be established in the present study. The changes in speech features differed from what can be expected in an intervention that is effective in decreasing depression and were inconsistent with each other for each of the participants. We suggest future research to investigate changes within the intervention sessions, to relate the changes in feature values to the topical content of the speech, and to relate the speech features directly to depression scores

What Factors are Associated with Flourishing? Results from a Large Representative National Sample

Flourishing is the ultimate end-state in psychology and a key-concept in the field of positive psychology research. Flourishers are those individuals with both high levels of hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being. Although many researchers have focused on one or another of these domains, only a few have investigated the comprehensive state of flourishing. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of flourishing and its association with socio-demographics, personality traits and situational factors. This study used data from the second wave of the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study-2 (NEMESIS-2), a national representative sample of adults in The Netherlands (n = 5303; 2010–2012). Findings were compared to having either high hedonic well-being or high eudaimonic well-being. Results showed that 37 % of the respondents were flourishers, mainly characterized by high levels of conscientiousness and extraversion and low levels of neuroticism. The situational factors of social support and positive life-events were significantly associated with flourishing when the analysis was controlled for socio-demographics and personality traits. Flourishing was most distinct from high hedonic well-being and showed parallelism with high eudaimonic well-being. More research is needed to establish a preferred flourishing instrument with validated cut-off points for flourishing and to understand the processes of situational factors that may underlie the promotion of flourishing. We recommend longitudinal designs and experience sampling studies to investigate the unique and modifiable predictors of flourishing. In addition, future research should include intervention studies that examine through which hedonic and eudaimonic pathways flourishing can be achieve