Psychosocial professionals often use the “strengths perspective”when working with patients. This approach assumes that all individuals have strengths, access to resources, and the capacity to grow. It also assumes that people learn from difficulties they encounter in life as well as from their successes. The primary intervention strategy
used in the strengths perspective is based on developing these capacities in order to overcome adversity and achieve goals. The strategy encourages positive coping skills, including motivation, resilience, willpower, and the ability to see illness as an opportunity that will help the patient to more readily accept his disease and adhere to the treatment plan. Psychosocial professionals are trained to listen to the patient’s life story, which often includes the patient’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions to situational events in his life. By learning to listen beyond the failed and pathological reactions, the psychosocial professional hears the coping mechanisms or strengths the person uses to live in the present and to find a path to the future.