Positive psychological qualities and adjustment to arthritis

Bisopsychosocial approaches to arthritis emphasize the importance of psychological and individual difference factors as predisposing, precipitating or perpetuating factor in arthritis through their interface with pain-related, inflammatory, and immunological responses. Rather than just focusing on understanding how loss is experienced, positive psychological approaches emphasize the importance of promoting and understanding how adjustment is experienced. In this narrative review, four positive psychological qualities are introduced and current empirical and theoretical research on their potential role for facilitating adjustment to arthritis is reviewed. These qualities include two which have received more research attention – optimism and benefit finding – and two that have received less attention but are nonetheless promising - gratitude and self-compassion. Conclusion Available research supports the proposition that optimism and benefit finding can serve as resilience factors for arthritis patients as each is associated with better psychological and physical well-being. The extent of their role for promoting adjustment may be limited by disease severity and duration. Theory and limited research on gratitude and self-compassion is suggestive of a possible role for these qualities in adjustment to arthritis and therefore they warrant further research attention.