Indian Journal of Positive Psychology

Pages:47-52
Ravinder Yadav (Department of Medical Records, GMCH-32, Chandigarh) Vipin Koushal (Medical Superintendent, GMCH-32, Chandigarh) Pallvi Aggarwal (ART Centre, PGIMER, Chandigarh) Varinder Saini (Department of Medical Records, GMCH-32, Chandigarh) Raman Sharma (Department of Hospital Administration, GMCH-32, Chandigarh)

Holistic concepts of health are basic to indigenous beliefs on the nature of health and well-being. The relationship between physical and mental health and between the social, biological and psychological determinants of these positive states is complex. Similar nature of complex relationships has been established physical illness and mental illness. A complex mix of psychological, social and physiological processes is involved in the onset and course of illness. Also, spiritual, environmental, physical, social and emotional factors are found interacting with influencing each other in complex ways. Positive psychology implies that if people are taught to be resilient and optimistic they will be less likely to suffer from depression and problems. This psychology also deals with personal hopefulness, associated with better adjustment to mental and physical illness and to major life stressors. Mental health as social and emotional intelligence highlights the capacity to recognize and respond appropriately to the emotions of the self and others. It also encompasses the concept of happiness as it relates to joy, love, self-efficacy, play and deep involvement rather than happiness as an illusionary high. The sense of mental well-being generated by physical exercise and the sense of achievement generated by physical actions to achieve certain goals are positive interactive processes between these two domains. Thus, these interrelationships of mental health can potentially improve physical health and the outcomes of physical and mental illnesses.

Pages:56-57
Ravi K. Gunthey (Department of Psychology, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajasthan) Hemant Desai (Department of Psychology, Smt. K.K. Arts & Commerce College, Ankleshwar, Gujarat) Himanshu Swadia ( Special Educator, TEPSE & HEPSN Centre Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, Rajathan)

Purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of music therapy on depressive elderly adults. Study adopted field experimental design on 80 elderly persons whose age was equal to or over 65 years and they were living in institutionalized homes or old age homes. Out of these 80 subjects, 60 elderly adults completed the pre and post sessions. A musical package was computerized includes the ragas, 'om', chirping of birds, sound of flow of a river/stream and waves of a sea etc. which was used as music therapy. Subjects got music therapy for 45 min. every morning and evening for a period of 30 days. Their depression level was measured on Beck Depressive Inventory (1996) before and after the introduction of music therapy. Outcome: Results indicate that music therapy helps the depressive elderly adults by lowering the depressive degree and promoting the quality of life. It thus confirms the hypotheses.

Pages:66-70
R. Subasree (Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu)

Life skill is the positive behaviour. In a general way life skill means a mix of knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and values and designates the possession of some skills and know-how to do something, or reach an aim. Child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) can be defined as (WHO, 2005) the capacity to achieve and maintain optimal psychological functioning and well being. It is directly related to the level reached and competence achieved in psychological and social functioning. The first part of this definition views CAMH as a positive dimension seen as a resource that is essential to subjective well-being and to our ability to perceive, comprehend and interpret our surroundings, to adapt to them or change them if necessary and to communicate with each other and have successful social interactions. [Lehtinen et al.,( 2005)]. The research review indicates that linkages to education as concerns encompass the direct promotion of capabilities through skills-based teaching and learning. The current study looks more specifically on how this notion of the Capability Approach is increasingly reflected in personality development in particular in the form of life skills education. Building on more than a decade of research and various studies by countries and agencies in the field of life skills education, it also summarizes some core characteristics that might help define more effective implementation. Life skills training refer to the interactive process of teaching competencies through a set of structural activities, such as role play, games and debates (Fisher, 2005). There is an interactive loop in the process of acquiring life skills that involves demonstration and practice, self-assessment, supportive and constructive feedback, and follow-up practice sessions. Life skills include Decision making, Problem solving, Creative thinking, Effective communication, Interpersonal relations, Self awareness, the ability to communicate with empathy, coping with emotions, stress management, conflict resolution, the ability to act assertively in responding to problems, the capacity to perceive goal-directed behaviour, and the ability to evaluate the effectiveness of one's actions and pursue other positions if necessary (Fisher, 2005). The present investigation was carried out to study the effect of life skills training programme among youth studying in final year P.G. A pre-post quasi experimental group design was adopted. Data was collected from a sample of 52 students who are final year P.G students. They were assigned randomly into two groups. The number of students in each group was 26 and 26 respectively. The Life Skills Training programme focused on group interactive sessions. The training programme duration was for 7 days with a follow-up study. The quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out to test the research questions. The t' test, correlation, and regression analysis were utilized for the current study. The study found that Life Skills Training programme had a significant influence on the level of aspiration. There was significant influence of Training programme among students on Life Skills.

Pages:75-78
M. Sangeetha and J. Sheela (Department of Psychology, Womens Christian College, Chennai)

The study aims to investigate whether marital hardiness predicts marital adjustment in professionals in the fields of Medicine, Information Technology and Education with a working spouse. An ex-post-facto survey research was adopted for the present study. The sample size for the study was 345 (N=345) of which 116 were males and 229 were females. The age of the individuals who were part of the study was 22 to 58 years. The average age of the husbands was 38.22 years and that of the wives was 34.53 years. The method of purposive sampling was used for the selection of sample. The Marital Hardiness Scale (Sangeetha 2009) and the ABC Scale of Marital Relationship (Nappinnai 2006) were the tools used for the study. The independent sample t-test, One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson's product-moment correlation and multiple regressions were the statistical techniques used for data analysis. The results show that among professionals in the fields of Medicine, Information Technology and Education with a working spouse profession, gender, type and nature of marriage, type of family, presence of an adolescent child, chronological age, age at marriage, years of marriage and number of children do not contribute to marital adjustment. Marital hardiness is related to marital adjustment. Quality of relationship, a dimension of marital hardiness has emerged as a significant predictor of marital adjustment.

Pages:81-83
Fatima Shahnawaz and Shamim A. Ansari (Department of Psychology, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh)

The present paper is aimed at deliberating the importance of school counseling for mental health. It is usually observed that students at school do not realize their capabilities and skills in performing their assignments at schools. This may be because of several reasons which may include lack of guidance and information dissemination and the lack of opportunity of guidance and counseling. Whenever students are in trouble and feel inability to make decisions with regard to the choice of courses and future career action. It is imperative to note that counseling is an important means for developing conducive mental health of all, especially of school students which may reflect through their academic performance. Therefore, school academic achievement in turn, may be taken as one of the strong indicators of mental health. The aim of the present endeavour is to deliberate on the importance of school counseling for better mental health and academic achievement of students in schools. Since, counseling comes after guidance, hence, guidance by means of information dissemination is to be provided to students for appropriate choice of courses before helping them through the process of counseling. Hence, present paper will discuss the role of effective counseling programme and mechanism for helping school children. Moreover, the deliberation will also focus on the inter-relationship between guidance, counseling and mental health of students as it is presumed that all the three aspects are highly related. The whole deliberation will look into the efficacy of school counseling as a means of promoting students' mental health that may subsequently be instrumental for over-all achievements in school as well as in the professional career.

Pages:89-90
B. Rajalakshmi and Hemalatha Natesan (Department of Psychology, Avinashilingam, University for Women, Coimbatore)

From Coimbatore Cancer Foundation, Tamil Nadu, India, 32 cases with cancer were screened using Case Study Schedule (Natesan, 2006) and WHO General Well-being Index (WHO, 1998). It was found that the General Well-being of the entire sample was 'Poor'. The entire sample was affected by fear and most of the subjects (above 80%) suffered from worry and anger. The psychological intervention called, Positive Therapy (Natesan, 2004) was administered on the sample individually, involving one hour per session. Ten sessions were given over a period of 2 weeks, after which they were re-assessed using the same tools. The results also proved that 35% had developed 'Best' general well-being and 65%, 'Moderate'. None of them had 'Poor' general well-being. There was a statistically significant increase in the mean general well-being after Positive Therapy, which also helped to bring down the negative emotions of the sample.

Pages:96-100
Savita Ahlawat (Department of Psychology, F. C. College for Women, Hisar) Promila Batra and Anirudh Sharma (Department of Psychology, M.D.U. Rohtak)

Music has been found to increase the productivity as well performance in industrial sectors. The studies in relation to academics are however, very sparse yet. In day to day life music is common and often unavoidable. The students are fond of playing music while studying. But the effects cannot be the same for everyone. Keeping such factors in mind, it was felt highly relevant to study the effect of music on arithmatic task amongst different personality types, i.e., extroverts and introverts. The present study was a 3x2 factorial (repeated measure) design to investigate the effect of music on arithmetic performance amongst extroverts and introverts having an age range of 14-16 years. The sample of 27 students (18 extroverts and 9 introverts) was screened out from a school of Nangloi (Delhi) after administering the introversion and extroversion inventory by Aziz and Agnihotry. After this, 3 different sets of arithmetic ability tasks were standardized and administered on these subjects in three different musical conditions (silence, instrumental and vocal). Errors and time taken were recorded. The results were analyzed by 2-way ANOVA followed by DRT indicated that music enhanced the performance in terms of speed much more than in terms of errors. Regarding speed, the type of music did not affect the extroverts and introverts differently, but regarding the errors, introverts were the gainer i.e. they committed lesser errors. It was also found that any type of music was better than silence condition. So music can be used as a facilitating agent in different domains of life.

Pages:105-109
Anita Sharma and Shweta Verma (Department of Psychology, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, HP)

a An Anova of the order of 2x2x(2) with repeated measure on the last factor was employed in the present study to gauge the effect of psychological interventions, if any between the control group and the experimental group in the two genders from pre to post test on occupational stress, psychosocial stress and life stress among the high stressed lawyers (N=160 who scored above mean +1/2 SD assessed through stress scales). The main findings are: (1). The main effects of group, gender and treatment have turned out to be significant at .01 level. (2). The interaction effects of group x treatment have yielded significant F ratios (1754.686**,1119.796**, and 373.025**, P.01) thereby depicting the remarkable improvement of experimental group from pre to post test over control group in terms of stress reduction due to psychological interventions. Thus, overall,t he effect of interventions was highly significant.

Pages:115-123
Shruti Shourie (Department of Psychology, D.A.V. College, Sector 10, Chandigarh)

The present investigation aims to determine the utility of meditation in enhancing positive affect, happiness, health, satisfaction with life, self esteem & well-being, and reducing negative affect, stress, anxiety and aggression. For the purpose of the present study, a total of 100 people, half males and half females, in the age range of 40-50 years (Average Age 44.7 years), have been studied thrice over a period of one year on all the study variables. The subjects have been picked up from the enrolment list of various Meditation Centers in Chandigarh and New Delhi. At the beginning of the study, when the subjects are not involved in any meditational activity, their baseline scores are obtained. Then they are initiated into a meditation program. A second assessment is done after three months period, during which the subjects are involved in meditative activity for five hours each week. Finally the third assessment is done after one year of involvement in the meditative activity, for five hours each week. A comparison is made of all the three assessments to find out if the practice of meditation has made any difference to the subjects. The subjects were assessed on Positive and Negative Affectivity Scale (Watson, 1988), Psychological well being (Ryff & Keyes, 1995), Satisfaction with Life (Diener et al., 1985), Clinical Anxiety Scale (Hudson, 1992), Index of Clinical Stress (Abell,1991), Self rated Perceived Happiness Status rating scale (Fordyce, 1995), Self rated Perceived Health Status rating scale (Blaxter, 1995), Aggression Questionnaire (Buss & Perry,1992), Self Esteem Questionnaire (Rosenberg,1965). For Positive Affect, Satisfaction with Life, dimensions of Psychological Well being, Self esteem, Perceived Happiness and Perceived Health, the baseline mean scores were the lowest followed by the mean scores after 3 months of meditation, and then by the mean scores after 12 months of meditation. This indicates an enhancement of positive emotional and mental states. The trends reversed for Negative Affect, Stress, Anxiety and dimensions of Aggression i.e., the baseline mean scores were the highest followed by the mean scores after 3 months of meditation, and then by the mean scores after 12 months of meditation. This indicates a decrease in negative emotional and mental states. This leads us to an inference that with meditation, the subjects have shown an improvement in the dimensions of positive affective and mental states and have shown a decline in the dimensions of negative affective and mental states.

Pages:128-132
Navdeep Singh (Department of Education, Govt. High School, Pheruman, Amritsar) Agyajit Singh (Ex. Head, Department of Psychology, Punjabi University, Patiala)

The present study aims to measure the emotional intelligence and self-concept of the adolescent children, and also to know if significant differences existed on these variables between male and female students. It was also the purpose to establish the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-concept of the adolescents. It was hypothesized that there would be on significant differences on emotional intelligence and self-concept of school students on the basis of sex. Also there would be a positive and significant relationship between psychological well-being and self-concept. The sample of the study consisted of 400 adolescent children studying in 9th and 10th classes, out of which 200 were males and 200 were females. They were administered Emotional Intelligence test by Dr. S.K. Mangal and Shubhra Mangal and Self-Concept test devised by Dr. R.K. Saraswat. The results reveal that (i) male and female students differed on fourth component and total EI; but not on the first three components, (ii) male and female students did not differ significantly on self-concept,(iii) there was a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and self-concept of adolescent children,