Anabel Salimian

Anabel Salimian, a student working on her minor in Applied Psychology, will lead a workshop on Positive Psychology Principles and Practices at the seventh annual UC Santa Barbara Mental health Conference on Saturday, May 7th. The workshop will describe different therapeutic approaches and sharing practices that can be applied to daily life to promote personal well-being and flourishing. Topics to be discussed include flourishing, the Broaden and Build Theory, a growth versus fixed mindset, Goal Focused Positive Psychotherapy (GFPP), the PERMA model of well-being, and gratitude. In times like these, facing a global pandemic, war, and global poverty and hunger, learning about positive psychology is crucial to be able to use and understand these practices and not only apply them to bettering our own lives, but then being able to share these resources with others to grow as a community.

UCSB’s 7th Annual Mental Health Conference, in addition to a keynote by Gevirtz School doctoral student Isabelle Fleury, will feature student panelists sharing their experience with mental health, various workshops about mental health topics relating to self-care and relationships, and free breakfast and lunch during the event. Learn more and register on line.

“I want to give special thanks to my mentor at the Carol Ackerman Positive Psychology Clinic (CAPPC) at UCSB, Dr. Heidi Zetzer, and my research team colleague and UCSB graduate student Elana Hubert for teaching me about these topics and providing me with the necessary resources,” Salimian says. “My work with the CAPPC as a research assistant focuses on public education and aims at creating a more practical and accessible way to disseminate information about the topics mentioned above, working on social media infographics and website construction in order to provide open access of this information to a larger population.”

Anabel Salimian is a fourth-year undergraduate honors thesis student pursuing a degree in Biopsychology with a minor in Applied Psychology.