The key role of spirituality in positive psychiatry and psychology

Abstract

The field of positive psychology and psychiatry has the goal of helping people to achieve greater happiness, fostering the factors that allow individuals, communities, and societies to thrive. It proposes a hierarchy of positive psychological character strengths, composed of 24 specific human qualities, including spirituality. Spiritually oriented well-being therapies are a promising and much-needed field. The bio-psycho-social model, developed by Cloninger and colleagues, is an empirically based model that considers the importance of spirituality in the human constitution and development, providing a systematic way to promote health as an integrated state, rather than merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Personality development depends on the creative process of integration through three complex adaptive systems of learning and memory, involving associative conditioning of habits, intentional self-control, and creative processes of self-awareness. The physical, mental, and spiritual aspects are interdependent, and must be addressed jointly aiming at a healthy, happy, and good life.