Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jankowski, Peter J.
• Sandage, Steven J.
• Bell, Chance A.
• Davis, Don E.
• Porter, Emma
• Jessen, Mackenzie
• Motzny, Christine L.
• Ross, Kaitlin V.
• Owen, Jesse
• Hilsenroth, Mark J
• Sandage, Steven

Titel

Virtue, Flourishing, and Positive Psychology in Psychotherapy: An Overview and Research Prospectus

Ist Teil von

• Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 2020-09, Vol.57 (3), p.291-309

Ort / Verlag

United States: Educational Publishing Foundation

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Quelle

EBSCOhost APA PsycARTICLES

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Researchers have increasingly called for the examination of both mental health symptoms and well-being when providing and evaluating psychotherapy, and although symptoms and well-being are typically inversely related, these appear to be distinct constructs that may require distinct intervention strategies. Positive psychology interventions, virtue-based treatments, and psychotherapies explicitly focused on promoting well-being have emerged in response to, or perhaps in concert with, the calls for attention to symptoms and well-being. Our review of the relevant and vast research pockets revealed that these treatments demonstrated relative efficacy in promoting well-being, whereas evidence for relative efficacy when reducing symptoms was largely inconclusive, particularly in psychotherapy contexts. We organized our review around the virtue-ethics notion that growth in virtuousness fosters flourishing, with flourishing consisting of more than the absence of symptoms, and specifically, that flourishing also involves increased well-being. The lack of evidence for relative efficacy among active alternative treatment conditions in promoting flourishing may suggest equal effectiveness, and yet, this also suggests that there are yet-to-be-identified moderators and mechanisms of change and/or insufficient use of research designs and/or statistical procedures that could more clearly test this major tenet of the virtue-ethics tradition. Nevertheless, we know that evidence-based problem-focused psychotherapies are effective at reducing symptoms, and our review showed that positive psychology interventions, virtue-based treatments, and psychotherapies explicitly focused on well-being promote well-being and/or virtue development. We encourage researchers and psychotherapists to continue to integrate symptom reduction and well-being promotion into psychotherapy approaches aimed at fostering client flourishing. Clinical Impact Statement Question: How does psychotherapy promote client flourishing? Findings: We suggest that psychotherapy inherently, and most often, implicitly, conveys a vision of the good life, that is, psychotherapy cannot avoid communicating to clients what it means to flourish. Flourishing is more than symptom reduction and consists of improved well-being. Positive psychology interventions, virtue-based treatments, and psychotherapies explicitly focused on promoting well-being have emerged in response to, or perhaps in concert with, calls for greater attention to symptom reduction and well-being promotion in psychotherapy. Our review revealed that these treatments demonstrated relative efficacy in promoting well-being, whereas evidence for their efficacy at reducing symptoms was largely inconclusive. Meaning: Our conclusion is that promoting flourishing in psychotherapy likely requires a dual focus that uses distinct interventions to target symptoms and well-being. Next Steps: The lack of evidence for relative efficacy in promoting flourishing suggests that there are yet-to-be-identified moderators and mechanisms of change and/or insufficient use of research designs and statistical procedures that could more clearly test the major tenet of the virtue-ethics tradition that virtues are constitutive of client flourishing. The latter also highlights the need for effectiveness studies involving diverse clients receiving routine care in outpatient community-based clinics, that is, practice-based designs, with much greater attention to therapist effects.