How an adult responds to, and forgives, a child or adolescent  has lasting consequences. A constructive style of responding can foster self-forgiveness and learning in a young person, while a reactionary style can foster guilt, …

This academic year, I met a student who I will call James.  He is one of several high school and college student clients that were referred to me with new diagnoses of attention deficit disorder …

When my daughter, Lauren, chose her college, she picked-up on an aspect that didn’t jump out at me. I guess I was the only one surprised at how that played-out four years later and it made me curious: how does a college foster a service culture that stands out to a high school student?

Imagine you are in the hospital following surgery. You have 70 staples holding things together, and they hurt. Your nurse sees that you are in pain and offers to take out 5 of …

The countdown of the top 10 positive psychology films of 2009 is about to begin. These are films that both appeal to a wide audience and have important messages. Many are perfect for use in …

Is there any substance and meaning behind the choice of who wins an Academy Award? In an analysis of 1,132 films, Simonton found that the Oscars do matter; they provide meaningful information about creativity and …

Last month I attended the 2nd Australian Positive Psychology Conference run by the Australian Positive Psychology Association (APPA) at Melbourne’s Monash University on 12-13 February. It came at the end of a long …

Inspiration, or more precisely the lack of it, strikes fear into the hearts of many students faced with an assignment or test, a blank sheet of paper and a ticking clock. I can remember countless …

On an apparently meaningless bus drive home, Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany: “I am not as happy as I could be.” She also realized that the problem might not be the conditions of her life, per se, but with how she lived and perceived it. She wondered if she could change her life without actually changing her life, and made a year-long commitment to work on improving her happiness.

Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, two English epidemiologists, have written a provocative book on how high levels of inequality in societies are harmful for everyone within them.