Another interesting session of The Newsmakers brings an exciting and funfilled conversation with our four champion students who have recently grabbed excellent job offers in the first-ever placement drive of SRM University-AP. Join Pesala Tanmayi, Koushik Bhargav, Tuhin Sarkar, Sri Harsha Tavidisetty Rajendra of CSE Department on August 08, 2020 at 5 pm and learn more about their journey at SRMAP.

Department of Student Affairs is organizing a webinar on “Reinventing Self Through the Science of Positive Psychology”. Dr. Smita Sharma, Student Counsellor, SRM AP will be delivering a talk and interacting with the audience during the session to be held on 12th August , 2020 at 5pm.

INCLUSION OF POSITIVE MENTAL HEALTH SKILL BUILDING “WELL-BEING” PROGRAM IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

Student life is one of the most important phases of life. In this phase, students are on a journey to discover themselves personally and professionally as well. To understand and discover the potentialities, there is first a need to understand self – How the mind works and processes information? How to deal with life’s challenges? How to bounce back in times of adversities? How to make use of opportunities… how to empower and enable oneself to move towards a flourishing life? How to deal with failures? How to celebrate success?

Importance of Well-Being in Educational Institutions

Historically educational institutions have aimed for academic excellence as sole evidence for their success. Now, there are growing numbers of educational institutions who are now acknowledging the need to develop students in a more holistic way, with a stronger focus on well-being. Much of this is in recognition of the increasing statistics on psychological distress and mental illness in young adults, and the realization of the need to take a more proactive rather than reactive approach to mental health.

‘Well-Being Program’ based on positive psychology and positive education for educational institutions will act as an antidote to the complex emotions college students are exposed to especially in the present circumstances.

Well-Being: Well-being is an individual’s experience of satisfaction with the ‘past’, contentment with the ‘present ‘and hope for the ‘future ‘. The scientific construct of subjective well-being can be defined as both a cognitive and affective self-evaluation of one’s life and experiences.

Well-Being through the Scientific Study of Positive Psychology

Positive Psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings and behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal”. As a field, positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character strengths, optimism, life satisfaction, happiness, well-being, gratitude, compassion (as well as self-compassion), self-esteem and self- confidence, hope and elevation. These topics are studied in order to learn how to help people flourish and live their best lives.

Well-Being and Happiness

Happiness is “people’s evaluations of their lives and encompasses both cognitive judgments of satisfaction and affective appraisals of moods and emotions” (Kesebir & Diener, 2008). It is the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.

Well-being and Neuroplasticity

The ability of the brain to reorganize itself, both physically and functionally, throughout the life due to an individual’s environment, behavior, thinking, and emotions is called Neuroplasticity. It is important to understand that we have the opportunity to take more responsibility for the intentional shaping of our own minds and through that, we can shape our brains in ways that would enable fundamental constituents of wellbeing to be strengthened.

WELL-BEING PROGRAM

Well-being & Young Adults

Introducing Well-being in colleges aids students in developing positive self-perceptions and adaptive thinking styles, learning to set constructive goals and make healthy future predictions, and building skills to help manage emotions and cope with difficulty. Through this model, the students’ mental health is supported by nurturing their social, emotional and psychological skills, ultimately leading to well-being and happiness of the optimally functioning students.

There can be a long list of benefits of which the most important are:
• Increases engagement.
• Increases Life Satisfaction.
• Increases productivity
• Increases Hope and resilience
• Reduces and prevents symptoms of depression.
• Reduces hopelessness.
• Prevents clinical levels of depression and anxiety.
• Reduces and prevents anxiety.
• May reduce behavioral problems.
• Works equally well for individuals of different racial/ethnic backgrounds

The embedding of positive psychology research findings into education best practices—has also been shown to reduce or even prevent depression and anxiety, increase enjoyment and engagement in colleges, improve curiosity and love of learning, and enhance social skills like empathy, cooperation, assertiveness, and self-control, all of which are correlated with increased academic achievement.

Positive Education and Positive Psychology Skills will assist colleges to develop and maintain the optimal functioning of students and staff by making them efficient to prevent and cure mental illness, improve their productivity and life fulfillment, provide means to nurture their own talent and mainly build hope to deal with any challenges that come their way.

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