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Through the years, gratitude has been found to facilitate well-being through a combination of reflection, positive emotions and interpersonal relationships, adaptive social behaviors and is associated with both psychological and physical health. Literature has also shown that a conscious deliberate experience of these emotions, especially gratitude, can help individuals better appreciate their life and possessions. Oncology patients often have to be hospitalized in inpatient settings depriving them of the opportunity to avail of professional mental health services, even if they have the resources to do so. Through the current study researchers aimed to explore whether simple gratitude exercises, adapted from a Positive psychology paradigm contributed to the subjective well-being of oncology patients. Participants (N=8) were required to maintain a gratitude journal for one month following which an in-depth interview was conducted to gauge the experiences of their illness and other areas of their life in relevance to the exercise. Eight interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis.
Keywords: positive psychology, gratitude, oncology, subjective well-being
"Throughout history philosophers considered happiness to be the highest good and ultimate motivation for human action.Yet fordecades psychologists largely ignored positive subjective well-being, although human unhappiness was explored in depth" (Diener, 1984)
Traditionally, human behaviour was studied by the social and health sciences from a pathological paradigm, which, according to Stumpfer (2005) focuses on human functioning within a "problem-oriented framework". He described the purpose of this paradigm as "finding out why people fall ill and, in the specific, why they develop particular disease entities". A science that has largely devoted its focus on healing, for many years neglected the possibility of focussing on identifying and enhancing the strengths of individuals. This would later prove to be an important aspect of major therapeutic schools (Seligman, 2002).
With the emergence of Positive Psychology as an independent branch of psychology in 1979, attempts were made to study positive emotions, traits, and abilities(Seligman, Steen, Park & Peterson, 2005). According to Keyes and Haidt (2003), the aim of positive psychology is to "better understand how individuals can negotiate, resolve, and grow in the face of life's stressors and challenges". This also helped change focus from a preoccupation with repairing the worst things in life to a more positive approach of building the best qualities...