Examining the effectiveness of best possible self exercise on the well-being of university students from the perspective of positive psychology and critical positive psychology

Mental disorders affect a very large part of the society and constitute significant part of the burden on the health system. As a writing exercise Best Possible Self, is one of the positive psychology intervention which can be used to improve mental health. The goal of this research is to examine the effectiveness of Best Possible Self exercise on the psychological well-being and psychopathology level of university students. Research data were collected from the foundation and state universities that placed in Istanbul. After the elimination of invalid entries, 598 valid forms were obtained. Which were filled mostly by women (83.1%). The mean age of the sample was 23.2. Psychological Well-Being Scale, Subjective Well-Being Scale, The Positive and Negative Experience Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire, sociodemographic form were used as data-collecting tools. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups; BPS, active control group or reference group. Course credits were given to a part of participants (N = 239) as a reward for their participation. Participants filled out the forms at three different times: before the interventions, after the interventions, and three months after the interventions. Participants in the BPS group had lower somatization scores in the post-test than pre-test and lower depression scores in the follow-up than pre-test. However, as a result of comparing BPS, active control and reference groups with MANOVA, no significant difference was found between the groups. That is, BPS exercise was not more effective than active control and reference groups. In this research attrition rate and the participant's compliance with instructions were examined from the perspective of exercise groups and reward conditions. Results indicated that compliance with instructions scores of participants in the BPS group were significantly lower than active control group. However these two groups did not differ from the each other in terms of attrition rate. In the other hand participants who were given course credits had higher scores of compliance with instructions and lower scores of attrition than participants with no rewards. BPS is a positive psychology exercise that can be used to improve and mental health and to prevent mental disorders. It is important that future research should examine BPS instructions and different reward conditions.