A systems approach to wellbeing

Excited to announce that our paper arguing for a systems approach to wellbeing has now been published. This has been a long time in the making and has truly been a collaborative and emergent venture. If you are frustrated with the dominant narrative around the individual pursuit of wellbeing without consideration of the systems in which this is cultivated then this might be of interest to you:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439760.2019.1639799

Yes this is a theory paper and so may not be for everyone - we’ve outlined a summary below to help you discern its relevance to your work and interests.

Despite the rapid growth and uptake of the positive psychological perspective by researchers and general audiences, hype regarding the field’s potential can lead to exaggerated claims, over-inflated expectations, disillusionment, dismissal, and unintentional harms. To help mature the field, we propose Systems Informed Positive Psychology (SIPP), which explicitly incorporates principles and concepts from the systems sciences into positive psychology theory, methodologies, practices, and discourse to optimize human social systems and the individuals within them. We describe historical underpinnings of SIPP, outline the SIPP perspective, clarify epistemological, political, and ethical assumptions, and highlight implications for research and practice. We suggest that SIPP can generate possibilities for creating sustainable unimagined futures.