Positive psychology, a science of strengths and virtues : beyond pathology and medication

Abstract

Social sciences in general, and psychology in particular, have mainly approached children and adolescents through a focus on deviation from normality and of incidence of pathology. Even preventive approaches involve the expectation of potential illness. Taking into consideration that the choice for following this trend was based on a good intention of understanding and ending human suffering this has, nevertheless, created a bias in the way we study and intervene with youth. It even interfered with how we think and what we expect from them. Paired with other factors like changes in social, economic, family and school domains, and with the growing power of pharmaceutics, this has led to a tendency of diagnosis in the youngest, with a concomitant impressive raise in percentages of children taking psychotropic medication. The newly positive psychology movement invests otherwise in assessing and optimizing the best in people. Interested in studying humans in terms of strengths, it can be a way to critically analyze, and hopefully reduce, what can be seen as a negative drift - either in terms of overuse of medication for behavioral and emotional problems in children, or of mainly consider treatment instead of facilitation of the best possible outcomes. Disempowered regarding their own diagnosis of psychopathology, and subsequent medication, children and adolescents are more prone to unethical and morally dilemmatic choices from caregivers. The aim of this article is to deconstruct the illness ideology, and to list hopeful alternatives underway in Portugal to deal with contemporary mental health in youth. (Helena Águeda Marujo)