An interdisciplinary mental wellbeing intervention for increasing flourishing: two experimental studies

Abstract

Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) have been shown to improve mental health, but little is known about their impact on the quantifiable experience of flourishing. Two experimental studies investigated whether the proportion of participants flourishing, assessed using the Huppert and So conceptual framework, could be increased through a 10-week online interdisciplinary intervention that combined strategies from positive psychology and lifestyle medicine. In Study 1 (n = 421), flourishing was significantly increased (p < 0.001) in the intervention but not the control group and was sustained at 12 weeks post-intervention. Study 2 (n = 458) showed that the addition of human support to the online intervention did not further improve its effectiveness at increasing flourishing. These studies demonstrate that online interdisciplinary interventions that incorporate positive psychology and lifestyle medicine strategies can increase human flourishing, irrespective of the addition of human support.

The Influence of Gender and Age on the Outcomes of and Adherence to a Digital Interdisciplinary Mental Health Promotion Intervention in an Australasian Nonclinical Setting: Cohort Study

“…The second main strength is the MHPI’s novel interdisciplinary nature that utilized multicomponent, evidenced-based strategies from the disciplines of lifestyle medicine and positive psychology. Using multicomponent strategies, rather than employing a single tactic, is also deemed to be more efficacious [ 56 , 71 , 82 ]. Third, the use of PSD principles in the intervention were both gender-responsive and age-sensitive.…”

“…Both cohorts participated in an intervention referred to as the “The Live More Project” or “The Lift Project” [ 56 , 57 ]. The 10-week digital interdisciplinary MHPI used evidenced-based strategies from the disciplines of lifestyle medicine and positive psychology for improving mental health and well-being, as detailed in Table 1 .…”

Addressing the COVID-19 Mental Health Crisis: A Perspective on Using Interdisciplinary Universal Interventions

“…Importantly, it has been argued that multicomponent PPIs are more beneficial than single modality approaches (Morton et al, 2020;Przybylko et al, 2021). Hendriks et al (2019) conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of 50 RCTs and concluded that Multicomponent PPIs (MPPIs) were efficacious, with a small to moderate effect on psychological well-being and a small effect on subjective well-being.…”

“…Accordingly, we argue that to optimize the effectiveness of mental health and well-being interventions, they should adopt an interdisciplinary approach, integrating evidence-based strategies from both the Positive Psychology and Lifestyle Medicine literature. The literature is scant in bringing these two disciplines together to improve mental health and well-being, although several studies (Morton et al, 2020;Przybylko et al, 2021;Renfrew et al, 2020) have suggested this interdisciplinary and multimodal approach may result in better outcomes than single modality interventions alone.…”

The Influence of Human Support on the Effectiveness of Digital Mental Health Promotion Interventions for the General Population

“…We also examined the influence of a DMHPI on the experience of “flourishing” (Przybylko et al, 2021b ), which is a construct used to express a high level of human functioning. We found that the inclusion of text messaging support, or weekly videoconferencing support, had no additional benefit in the enhancement of flourishing.…”