Introduction to Special Issue: Interventions to Modify Psychological Well-Being and Population Health

Abstract

Psychological ill-being is on the rise, with 1 in 5 Americans suffering from a mental disorder in any given year. Additional evidence demonstrates that psychological well-being has also decreased over time. These trends are particularly worrisome given the substantial and growing body of evidence demonstrating that psychological ill-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, anger) is associated with an elevated risk of developing chronic diseases and premature mortality, while aspects of psychological well-being (e.g., positive affect, sense of purpose and meaning, life satisfaction) are independently associated with improved physical health outcomes. An underexplored but promising approach to enhancing both psychological and physical health is through developing a set of tools that specifically target psychological well-being (often referred to as positive psychological interventions (PPIs) although many interventions developed outside the field of positive psychology also achieve these goals). Such interventions hold promise as a strategy for improving population health. However, critical knowledge gaps hold us back, and we have not yet developed a robust set of intervention strategies that can improve psychological well-being in meaningful, durable, and scalable ways that would also have downstream effects on physical health. The goal of this special issue is to help address these knowledge gaps by bringing together current conceptual frameworks, critical examination of key constructs, and novel empirical evidence needed to identify and examine interventions that can modify psychological well-being, particularly those that have the potential to be scaled at the population level and with durable effects.