Living Skillfully: Your Mind and Health

As I mentioned in a recent post, with the times the way they are I think it would be good to have a small series on “positive psychology”, the branch of psychology that is concerned with why and how we can be happy.
Let’s begin with an opportunity for you to participate in some research on [...]

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Continuing my Positive Psychology series, where better to look for material than the blog Positive Psychology News Daily? And there we find Dave Shearon’s post “Four Statements to Happier“, a simple outline of what he’s learned about what makes us happy.
His statement goes like this:
“Hi. My name is ________. I want to be happier. I [...]

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I’ve recently finished reading Richard O’Connor’s book Happy at Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy. O’Connor doesn’t identify himself as part of the Positive Psychology movement, and in fact has some criticisms of it, but I am putting this review in my Positive Psychology series because it is definitely in the same general [...]

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I’m studying biological psychology at the moment, and in one of the articles set for us to read I came across a reference to research showing the powerful effect of mental attitude.
The study is called “Does humor moderate the effects of experimentally-induced stress?” (Newman & Stone, 1996, published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine 18:2, DOI [...]

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Today’s post is a difficult one, and at first sight an odd fit for the Positive Psychology series. I’m going to talk about suicide.
The reason is that a relative of mine by marriage has just committed suicide, much to the shock and grief of all of us. He had been going through difficult times and [...]

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