The Impact of a Positive Psychology Course on Students' Lives: Results From a Collaborative Assessment

Positive Psychology as Prevention

When initially presenting the rationale for positive psychology in the late 1990s, Seligman pointed to the growing incidence worldwide of major depressive disorder. Depression’s prevalence has increased 10-fold in 50 years (Seligman et al., 2009). Depression has become the second most common cause of long-term disability worldwide and is associated with reduced workplace productivity (Lerner et al., 2004). A recent study in South Korea concluded that over the lifetime of working-age adults, major depressive disorder resulted in a 4.3 billion dollar loss in Gross Domestic Product (GDP; Zomer et al., 2020). The significance of depression as a source of disability is only likely to increase in the future. For many people, major depressive disorder is a chronic condition that, historically, appears to be beginning earlier in their lifespan. Among adolescents, the worldwide prevalence of significant depressive symptoms increased from 24% in 2001 to 37% in 2010 (Shorey et al., 2022).

A positive psychology program was developed in schools to provide young people with skills to counteract depression. While the number of well-designed studies is limited, there is evidence that among children and adolescents, developing skills that protect against major depressive disorder can provide a form of psychological inoculation (Dray, 2021). In work with young people, there are suggestions that resilience training may prevent depression and anxiety later in development (Giliham, et al., 2019)