Mind Meets Body: Lifestyle Medicine and Positive Psychology Interventions for School

What sets Positive Psychology Interventions apart from other interventions is their demonstrated effectiveness in producing positive outcomes. Recently, lifestyle medicine interventions demonstrated evidence of positive psychological outcomes. Lifestyle medicine is a fast-growing medical branch that aims to prevent and help manage non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. It comprises six pillars: physical activity, sleep, eating well, relationships, stress management and avoiding risky substances such as alcohol and tobacco. Two controlled experimental studies were conducted in secondary schools in Ireland. Students were asked to participate in a series of pure Lifestyle Medicine interventions or combined Lifestyle Medicine and Positive Psychology Interventions for 4 weeks to improve their health and well-being. In this chapter, we will discuss the research findings and propose a range of Lifestyle Medicine interventions that can be used in schools as PPIs to help students flourish psychologically whilst simultaneously increasing their physical activity, improving their sleep, access to whole foods, relationships, stress mindset and reducing risky substance use.