One South Side High School student has taken her project for the Intel Science Research Competition and used it to spread positive energy and good cheer to nursing homes throughout Nassau County.
Carly Roman, a senior at the school, worked with 80 senior citizens to determine their levels of optimism and whether those levels could be raised by focusing on positive thoughts.
The idea, Roman explained, first developed through her work as co-president of the community service project GlamourGals, in which a group of students give makeovers to women in adult facilities. “We go to Maple Pointe in Rockville Centre every month. I love it there, I love the people,” Roman said. “The ladies there respond so positively to us when we go, so that’s how I decided to combine positive psychology and senior citizens.”
Positive psychology, according to Roman, is a relatively new field that focuses on nurturing a patient’s happy and positive feelings, rather than simply seeking to treat mental illnesses.
Roman, requiring a mentor to oversee the project, contacted the positive psychology department at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Martin Seligman, whom Roman describes as “literally the father of positive psychology,” responded and helped her obtain a graduate student at the university as a mentor.
Roman used Seligman’s “Three Blessings” exercise, which consists of providing the participants with a notebook and encouraging them to write down three things that made them happy every day for a week. Using surveys to determine levels of optimism in the senior citizens, Roman discovered a significant statistical increase by the end of the week.
The successes of the project led Roman to contact facilities across Nassau County, including Maple Pointe.
On Oct. 11, Roman worked with 25 Maple Pointe residents on the “Three Blessings” exercise, and found that those results concurred with those compiled for her research project. “The program was very well received, and I was competing with afternoon poker, so 25 people is pretty good, I think,” Roman said.
