Project Overview

Prepare a 1,800 word (not including title page or references) academic paper in APA format that presents evidence for and application strategies around creating a program in the setting of your choice to dramatically increase life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health in the community you serve.

Introduction

This portfolio work project will allow you to present your findings academically and showcase your ability to design and implement a strategy that will benefit individuals and, hopefully, society in general.

Scenario

You are working in a setting where individuals could benefit from a program or resource that would increase their life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health.

Your Role

In your role at the organization of your choice, you have been charged with understanding why society, in general, feels less fulfilled, less satisfied and why mental health concerns are at an all-time high, even though survival has never been easier for our species in general. You must develop a protocol, resource, or training that will lead to a genuine change in how individuals feel about their lives, their place in society, their purpose, and leads people to their strongest mental health possible.

Remember, there are many variations of fulfillment and success, and that mental health is a subjective measure of our self-consciousness. You can choose to focus on any group or subgroup you wish, so long as the program you develop aims at accomplishing a generally higher level of life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health.

Requirements

Use information from the material presented in this class, the Foothill College library, any additional credible resources like journal articles, university studies, non-profit organizations, and government resources to create an analysis and program design that includes the following:

• Set the stage for your project at the societal level. Explain the macro or broader perspective of what the issues are in achieving life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health within the community you serve. In other words, what is the background of your population as it relates to this objective? Where is your group today versus generations prior regarding these principles? What is the setting for people today, and what are individuals up against at the societal level? What has been the emotional and personal cost been of this dynamic? How might society benefit if true life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health were achieved within the community you serve? Is it merely that certain costs would be avoided, or would this unleash new potentials for life and society?
• Bring your topic to the individual level. Explain the micro or personal perspective of your topic. How does this impact the individual? What are some ways that society can help or hurt the individual concerning your topic? How do individuals today perceive themselves with these objectives? What are the potential struggles and limitations of individuals managing this process? What are the potential benefits to the individual if this objective was achieved? What is the long-term outlook for the individual concerning should a program like this works?
• Detail the science behind life satisfaction, fulfillment, and mental health. What can neuroscience and physiology tell us about this? Where are its psychological routes, and how does it impact an individual’s mind, psychology, and personality? What are some of the main physiological limiters? What does science suggest regarding achieving these goals for the individual?
• Detail the proven techniques from the academic literature behind people better understand their psychology concerning your chosen focus. Do you need to educate and inform, or would you aim to attempt change through guided activities and practice?
• Find a program that has implemented these findings or other strategies to impact people’s lives, attitudes, and behaviors. What have the challenges been for this program or group? What have the unforeseen impacts been of a program like this? What further research needs to be done within these areas for your program to be maximized?
• Explain the program you wish to develop, and how would it be unique to the population you hope to serve? For example, maybe there is a great program to model yours after for people in midlife, but you want to focus on children or adolescents. What things would you do to customize it to the population you serve? What hurdles are unique to your demographic, and how will you best address these concerns?
• Conclusion: end your paper with a compelling conclusion paragraph

These requirements serve as a form of rubric in the sense that if you address in detail, with credible sources, these concepts, you will receive full points. If you do not, you will receive partial or no credit for that section of the paper.

Deliverable Format

• This is an academic paper. It should not be written in the first person.
• APA format should be utilized. Pay particular attention to:
  • APA formatted title page, but this is not included in the total word count. (a running head and an abstract are not required)
  • Headings and subheadings should be utilized starting on page two.
  • References should be in APA style, including undoing hyperlinks for web addresses. At least five sources should be cited. References are not included in the word count.
  • 12 point, Times New Roman, Double-Spacing required
• Word count (not including title page or references) is 1,500 at minimum.
• Points will be removed for
  • writing in the first person
  • writing in anything other than APA format
  • missing the word count
  • not addressing the bulleted requirements above
  • Grammatical errors and poor transitions
• Primary sources (i.e., academic journal articles and university papers) should be very well represented in your references, but other sources like websites and books can be used to support primary sources (.gov and .org or generally more reputable than .com sites).
• TurnItIn.com will be utilized to review your paper for plagiarism and matches across the web. A certain amount of your paper will match other resources as you will likely cite or quote a resource. No more than 25% of a paper can match other work online, including your own previous work for other classes. In general, a highly scored paper with proper citations and quotations will have no more than 10% matches. A zero score will be given to papers with more than 50% match, and a 25%-50% matched paper will likely require a rewrite or reorganization to avoid receiving a zero.

Resources to help you get started

Creditable Sources

Academic papers and peer-reviewed journal articles are the “gold standard,” but sometimes you need to venture beyond those works to get a current and more anecdotal account of phenomena. It is not uncommon for an individual to think that one political party represents their views about economic and governmental involvement levels, but then feels alienated by that same party’s views on other important topics.

The following chart is an excellent tool to understand our media’s biases and credibility. It is very common these days to “live in an echo” chamber and only listen to voices that support our beliefs. Maybe, a more worthwhile exercise would be to use this chart to get multiple viewpoints, from credible resources to help us make better-informed decisions. Use this tool as you set out on finding credible sources outside the academic literature.

APA Style

Watch this video I recorded for more insights on your paper

https://youtu.be/MLUZx-lFdUg