Traditionally, psychiatry has been defined and practiced as a branch of medicine focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses. Based on growing empirical evidence, we believe that this definition warrants expansion to include the concept of positive psychiatry. In the present article we provide a critical overview of this emerging field and a select review of relevant scientific literature. Positive psychiatry may be defined as the science and practice of psychiatry that seeks to understand and promote well-being through assessment and interventions involving positive psychosocial characteristics (PPCs) in people who suffer from or are at high risk of developing mental or physical illnesses. It can also benefit non-clinical populations. Positive psychiatry has 4 main components: (1) positive mental health outcomes (e.g., well-being), (2) PPCs that comprise psychological traits (resilience, optimism, personal mastery and coping self-efficacy, social engagement, spirituality and religiosity, and wisdom - including compassion) and environmental factors (family dynamics, social support, and other environmental determinants of overall health), (3) biology of positive psychiatry constructs, and (4) positive psychiatry Interventions including preventive ones. There are promising empirical data to suggest that positive traits may be improved through psychosocial and biological interventions. As a branch of medicine, rooted in biology, psychiatry, especially with the proposed conceptualization of positive psychiatry, is well poised to provide major contributions to the positive mental health movement, thereby impacting the overall healthcare of the population.
Social cognition refers to the brain mechanisms by which we process social information about other humans and ourselves. Alterations in interpersonal and social functioning are common in major depressive disorder, though only poorly addressed by current pharmacotherapies. Further standardized tests, such as depression ratings or neuropsychologic tests, used in routine practice provide very little information on social skills, schemas, attributions, stereotypes and judgments related to social interactions. In this article, we review recent literature on how healthy human brains process social decisions and how these processes are altered in major depressive disorder. We especially focus on interactive paradigms (e.g., game theory based tasks) that can reproduce daily life situations in laboratory settings. The evidences we review, together with the rich literature on the protective role of social networks in handling stress, have implications for developing more ecologically-valid biomarkers and interventions in order to optimize functional recovery in depressive disorders.
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