Positive Institutions: positive healthcare
Three interviews with practitioners
Table of Contents
1. Tom Hendriks, GZA (health care institute for asylum seekers .......................... 2
2. Frederike Bannink MSc, clinical psychologist............................................... 17
3. Hein Zegers MSc, independent psychotherapist........................................... 32
, 1. Tom Hendriks, GZA (health care institute for asylum
seekers
[Spreker 2]
Question: Could you please tell something about your career and how you got into
touch with positive psychology?
[Spreker 1]
Tom Hendricks, currently I work for GZR Healthcare, which is responsible for the mental
health care of refugees in the Netherlands living at asylum seeker centers.
I developed a program called the Babu program, which is currently being executed in over
40 centers by about 30 trainers, and besides that I do research and I also am a visiting
professor of the University of Suriname, where I teach a course in positive psychology.
And positive psychology for me is a journey. You asked me to describe a bit how I got in
contact with positive psychology, and it's a bit of a long journey.
I'll try to keep it short as possible, but I think it started in 1992 when I became a student
at Tilburg University. What triggered me to become to study psychology was I was
intrigued by the Maslow pyramid when I saw the year before that, and I saw the highest
thread of the pyramid, the self-actualization. I was really intrigued by that and I wanted to
study psychology to find out how I actually can become self-actualized myself.
And so I went to study at Tilburg and I have to say it was a bit of a disappointment, because
although it was a very interesting study, you learn a lot about statistics, about scientific
research, you know, you learn about all diseases and disorders, but you basically only
learn about what's wrong with people, not what's right with people. And I chose to do child
and youth psychology because I wanted to work with adults and young adults,
adolescents and young adults. And I remember going to my professor for my thesis and
he asked me, what do you want to study or what do you want to research?
And I said something like, you know, what makes young people happy? And he looked at
me like, you know, happiness, studying happiness, you know, this was about 1995 or
1994, I mean, it was not done in university. So I started to study artificial ways of
becoming happy, let's say, the relationship between youth culture and drug use, actually.
So the focus was my study on, you know, what young people and drug use. After that, I
went to Mexico City for an internship and that changed my life because it was a totally
diYerent environment for me. Mexico is a third world country or second world country,
whatever you want to label it.
,But the people appeared to me to be more happy and more optimistic and more alive,
actually, than the people in Holland who have a higher standard of living and have a much
safer life. So when I got back from Mexico, I was actually really unhappy here in the
Netherlands myself and I couldn't find stability in my life. So I tried some functions in
sales and coaching.
Actually, I wanted to start, I actually started a company with a friend of mine on coaching,
sales coaching. We did a training in Germany in 2000, startup of the internet, which was
such a success that they invited us to start up the branch in the Netherlands because
they thought we knew a lot about the internet and it was a very attractive deal financially.
So we started that.
Unfortunately, the whole internet bubble exploded really fast, but then we continued and
I really enjoyed working at ICT because entrepreneurship was for me a way to develop
character strengths. If I were to put it in positive psychology terms, like zest and
perseverance, love of learning, self-control, leadership, I enjoyed that. But the
disadvantage was that psychology became more like a hobby, which I did beside the ICT.
And I wasn't actually able to use my own creativity in my job. So there was, my life was
not in balance and it resulted to me in a burnout actually. Around that time, I think it was
2004, I think the precursor of positive psychology came into my life.
I did a course in NLP, Neuromuscular Programming, which is basically at that time was
applied psychology. And I enjoyed that. But on the other hand, it was too, it was not
scientifically rigorous.
And there was also this whole, what Barbara once called the tyranny of the positive
attitude in the US, just thinking positive will change your life completely and will make you
happy. And I didn't like that, like that whole attitude. So when my coach said, well,
perhaps you should get into positive psychology, which is a new stream.
Maybe that's something for you, but the name, actually, positive psychology didn't
resonate with me. I was like, again, this positive thinking. And so I didn't look up to it, look
into it.
About one year later, when I was working at a diYerent company doing IT recruitment, I
stumbled upon a file I was searching, I think it was Napster, on videos for psychology. And
I came across this video called Positive Psychology 101 by Talbin Shahar of Harvard
University. So I thought to myself, well, if it's Harvard, then you know, it must be more than
just happy, happyology.
And I started watching the episodes, which I can recommend every student to watch
again on YouTube, you can find the courses, like 21 courses of 90 minutes. And then that's
the point where I started to get into the positive psychology. About a year later, I went to
Suriname with my wife, whom I met in the Netherlands.
, And I started actually working as a psychologist back again, my own practice and for a
major company, applying techniques from positive psychology. In 2001, I joined part time
University of Suriname, which had just set up a whole department of psychology. It was a
training project with Erasmus University.
So a whole curriculum of Erasmus was implemented in Suriname. I started teaching
personality psychology and work psychology. And I really enjoyed that very much working
with students working with psychology again.
And in 2014, I started a PhD as an external PhD candidate for the University of Amsterdam
and the Vrije Universiteit. First, I focused on meditation, yoga meditation, since I'm very
familiar with that. And it was very relevant to the Hindustani population in Suriname,
which I'm also, I was very into that culture.
But gradually, I found just focusing on meditation was too limited for me. And I was
crossing over more to positive psychology. And in 2015, I was asked to join university full
time.
And I said, Okay, I want to do that. On one condition, I want to develop our own course
and introduction positive psychology program. And that was that was approved.
I contacted Talvin Shahar, but I actually wrote a letter to him. He responded to me very
kindly. He helped me out with setting up the course.
So that's the course I started an introduction course. Two years later, also for the master
program, program called positive mental health, where I focus on more the clinical
implementation of positive psychology interventions. Then in 2018.
Meanwhile, I switched when I switched from meditation to more positive psychology. I
also switched from a cooperation with VU to the cooperation with Planta University in
during a conference, positive psychology conference in Florida, I came across a young
Wahlberg, Professor Wahlberg at that time, and Professor Ernst Bollmeier. And I got a
program called the strong minds program.
And I wanted to implement that in Suriname. And which was really nice, because once
we had the program was a shell from the shell company turned out to be the inside was
just NLP exercises. So I completely arranged rearranged the program, implementing only
positive psychology exercises.
I did a study on that randomized controlled trial. In 2018, I attained my PhD. And at that
time, I was at a one time I was at a conference here giving a workshop.
And somebody from this healthcare company in Ireland approached me because they
were planning to do a implementation of a program for refugees. And they really liked the
positive psychology approach because positive psychology treats refugees not as
victims, but as well strong people, resilient people who want to take the opportunity to
improve their lives. So the traditional interventions in among refugees until that time were
