HEALTH AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

In this course you will gain a fundamental understanding of health psychology, positive psychology, the psychology of forgiveness and mindfulness. You will be challenged to think critically about the world around us, the society and societal influences on health psychology, the importance of mental health, forgiveness, and mindfulness. We will also explore topics such as: stress and its effect on mental health, risk and protective factors, and we will make an overview of the physical and mental health promotion.

Welcome to day 1 of Health and Positive Psychology class at MSYP Virtual 2021. During our course we will look at how different factors, such as our genetics and biology, our cognition, society, and culture may affect our health. We will  also look at the origin of some health problems – such as stress and depression, and we will explore how psychologists around the world attempt to change people’s behaviours and the obstacles to change their lifestyles.  Finally, we will look at specific health programs and why they were (or were not) effective. 

In order to help you prepare for today’s class we ask you to watch these two videos: 

Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo4pMVb0R6M 

The first video is an introduction to psychology as a science, history of psychology, what is psychology attempting to understand and in what ways.  

Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qink-sq-f60&t=5s 

The second video is an introduction to health psychology, and it is a brief summary of how and in what ways  thoughts, feelings and behaviour interact with our health and well-being.

We would like you to watch these videos in order to dip your toes in the ocean called psychology. This will help you to create some understanding of the topics we are about to cover and to guide you in the process of critical assessment of the health issues in the society that we live in. 

We are looking forward to having you in our class and see you all later 🙂

Adela and Edis

Dear students,

Welcome to day 2 of health psychology with Edis and Adela. Today we will be talking about stress. Stress is something experienced by all individuals (all of us) and can be a sign of both normal and abnormal functioning. 

In our class today we will talk about different types of stress, different physical and psychological symptoms of stress, and we will address an important question – how can stress serve as a contributing factor for other health issues or disorders.

At the end of the class we will also talk about stress as a protective factor – and how experiencing stress does not necessarily have to be a negative experience? In order to prepare for today’s class we ask you to watch this video on emotion, stress, and health in order to get a better understanding of the three main concepts in health psychology – emotion, stress, and health itself. 

After watching a video, we ask you to read this short article on Stress published by an online website called Psychology today.

Before the next class we ask you to identify one health issue that you recognize in your immediate environment –  the issue that  you find important and interesting to critically engage with. Throughout the course you will be working in groups or individually in order to develop a plan, campaign, poster, presentation or anything that could help you promote that specific health issue and raise awareness on the issue in hopes of addressing it and educating people about the importance of both physical and mental health. At the end of the course you will be asked to present your findings and to promote the issue that you have identified. 

See you all in class!

Welcome to day 3 of our class on Health and Positive Psychology. We hope that the first two classes have been interesting and that you are looking forward to our next class. So far we have covered topics of physical and mental health, and yesterday we talked about stress, and ways in which stress can be harmful to us and we also discussed some physical and psychological consequences of stress. 

Today we are addressing an important topic of stress in adolescence and we will then shift our gears and talk about positive sides of stress. We will then focus on different strategies that you could use to manage stress.

In order to help you prepare for today’s class, we ask you to watch this brief video and learn how to make stress your friend. We hope you enjoy the video and see you all later today.

Dear students,

Welcome to Day 4 of your favorite class at MSYP 2021 VIRTUAL, with your favorite teacher Adela and the less interesting, more boring long haired with the palm tree teacher Edis. 

In our class yesterday we talked about adolescent stress and different ways to cope with and manage stress. We also emphasized the importance of self-efficacy and healthy lifestyle, and exercise. We finished the class with a brief 3 minute breathing exercise and we do hope that you will continue to practice the deep breathing exercise in your free time. 

In our class today we will continue the conversation on stress management strategies and we will then make a link between stress and anxiety disorders. Over the next two days we will be exploring the nature of anxiety disorders, some symptoms of anxiety disorders, and the way that we diagnose and treat anxiety disorders. 

In order to prepare for today’s class we ask you to watch this brief video explaining the most common form of the anxiety disorder, The Generalized Anxiety Disorder. After watching the video, we kindly ask you to go onto the NIMH page and read more about the Social Anxiety Disorder. We also ask you to come to class with some ideas on how teachers could interact with students in your class who have been diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. 

Dear students, 

We hope that you are well. Today’s class will be focusing on treatment and therapy options so we kindly ask you to do some research on the internet on some therapy options for anxiety disorders. To help you with research – you can start by watching this video.

Also, please come prepared to discuss the prompt from our class on Thursday: “We also ask you to come to class with some ideas on how teachers could interact with students in your class who have been diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. “

See you soon.

Dear students,

Welcome to week 2 of our class on Health and Positive Psychology. I hope that the first week of classes has been interesting and that you are looking forward to our next class.  So far we have covered topics of physical and mental health, and we talked about stress, and anxiety.

Today we are shifting gears and will begin addressing an important topic of positive psychology. Throughout this week we will focus on different aspects of positive psychology, gratitude, well-being, forgiveness, and mindfulness. 

In order to help you prepare for today’s class we ask you to watch these two brief videos:

1. Video 1
2. Video 2

We also encourage you to explore this unique list of 50 positive and inspirational quotes and that you come to our class later today ready to share which one was your favorite and why 🙂

We hope you enjoy doing the homework and look forward to seeing you all later today.

Dear students, 

We hope that you are all doing well. After brief a introduction to Positive psychology, concepts like happiness and ‘The Identity Tree’ exercise, we are going to dive into exploration of forgiveness. Before our next class, take a moment and reflect on how you define forgiveness, what does forgiving mean to you and what do you need to do in order to forgive? Also try to link forgiveness with our overall topic of Health Psychology, both physical and mental health. 

Before today’s class please watch this video by leading expert on forgiveness. Please also read this article, by Psychology today. 

I am very much looking forward to sharing your understanding of forgiveness and the processes behind it.

See you in class. 

Dear students, 

Welcome to another day of Health and Positive Psychology at MSYP 2021 Virtual. After the introduction to Psychology of Forgiveness, we want you to think more about who we forgive and maybe some of the techniques you use in your daily life to land planes of grievances. Moreover, think about something that you might have not forgiven yourself, or some uncontrollable circumstances that have hurt you (sickness or death in family, environmental disasters, or COVID 19 pandemics). Take a moment to reflect and keep in mind what we have learned today to come up with some motivation to forgive. 

Additionally, we ask you to keep working on your Health promotion projects, as you will be presenting those in class on Friday. If you have any questions regarding your project or need some help please do not hesitate to contact us. We are more than happy to help you and guide you. 

We will see you in class.

Dear students, 

We hope that you are well. Thank you for tuning in to our classes so far.

We are using this space to remind you about our group-work during the class today. Please think about how you would like to promote mental health in your communities. The two topics that you have identified at the beginning of this week are ANXIETY and DEPRESSION. So, before our class today, think about how you would raise awareness of and promote mental health in your environment. We will be making posters and presentations in different groups. You will present your work during our class on Friday and we will use your work for the closing ceremony on Saturday. 

This link by WHO will help you understand mental health promotion. Please watch this video to help you get started on your presentation.

Looking forward to working with you tomorrow. See you.

Dear students, 

Welcome to the final day of Health and Psychology class.

This week we addressed important topics of positive psychology and forgiveness, and yesterday you worked on your final projects in class. We are looking forward to seeing your beautiful promotions, your posters, and your presentations. 

Please take time before class today to finish up working on your final projects, watch this video –  and see you all soon 🙂

All our best,

Adela and Edis