What Is Positive Psychology?

Take our Optimism Test

Find a therapist near me

Police Week, established by President John F. Kennedy in 1962 and observed annually during the week of May 15 (Peace Officers Memorial Day), draws tens of thousands of officers to Washington, D.C., for memorial services, candlelight vigils, and ceremonies honoring those lost in the line of duty. What receives less attention—though it deserves significantly more—is the psychological architecture underlying this week and what it can, with intentional design, offer the living.

This post proposes a conceptual reframe: applying Martin Seligman’s PERMA model of well-being to Police Week observances, transforming what is primarily a commemorative structure into a psychologically generative experience—one that honors the fallen while actively supporting the flourishing of those who continue to serve.

PERMA represents Seligman’s five-element framework for human flourishing: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Rather than pathology-centered intervention, the model orients practitioners toward the proactive cultivation of well-being. For a profession in which trauma exposure is occupational, and in which reactive wellness models have consistently underperformed, PERMA offers something more durable: a strengths-based scaffold for psychological growth.

Grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive. Research in positive psychology consistently demonstrates that cultivating positive emotional experiences does not diminish the authenticity of mourning; it supplements and sustains it. Police Week can be structured to include appreciation ceremonies that center the lives and contributions of fallen officers, not merely their absence.........

© Psychology Today