Clinical Grand Round 4 - Shifting the Frame: Building a Life with Joy!

Cognitive Behavioral Therapies include both traditional interventions that directly aim to change cognitions and behavior, as well as more recent iterations that incorporate acceptance-based strategies and a focus on values-based living (e.g. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy). While key differences exist between these interventions, they uniformly work to treat clinical distress, understandably, with perhaps what can be considered a secondary aim to increase happiness and other positive emotions (e.g., joy). Although cultivating joy is not necessarily a primary aim of these evidence-based interventions, inadequate attention in this domain could have negative implications for maintenance of treatment gains. Furthermore, insufficient attention to positive emotions in treatment is not only inconsistent with culturally-relevant and protective expressions of mental health within minoritized communities (e.g., LGBTQ+ pride; Black joy), it misses critical opportunities to develop resilience that protects against ongoing socio-cultural-political factors stigmatizing minoritized identities and harming minoritized communities. As such, directly working to cultivate joy within therapeutic contexts, particularly when working with minoritized people, is imperative.

In this grand round, two experienced clinicians and researchers will illustrate how to effectively identify treatment targets to promote happiness and cultivate joy.  First, the emotion of joy and its function will be overviewed.   Next, presenters will demonstrate how to apply culturally responsive and relevant emotion regulation skills, aiming to help people cultivate joy in both the short- and long-term. Strategies including behavioral activation, pleasant activity scheduling, values clarification, and committed action will be overviewed. Throughout, the presenters will address application of cultural responsiveness to behavior therapies such as distinguishing between the values of a minoritized person and the collective values of a dominant culture, as well as identifying empowerment strategies.