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This chapter examines the role of stress and emotional well-being as critical antecedents of important outcomes in the military context. In it, we provide a framework for understanding the sources of stress among military personnel. Using this model, we review the risk factors associated with combat and deployment cycles in addition to protective factors, such as personality characteristics and social support, which mitigate the effects of stress on emotional well-being and performance. Finally, we evaluate efforts by military organizations to enhance the emotional well-being of service members through training programs designed to build resiliency.

Purpose: This study examines the relationship between marital satisfaction and sexual satisfaction, as well as other contributing factors, in the lives of older American adults.

Design/methodology/approach: Data from a restricted sample (N = 1,278) from the second wave of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) was analyzed. Regression models were used to examine associations with marital satisfaction.

Findings: Within ordinary least squares regression gender, education level, mental health, self-rated happiness, the absence of sexual quality, physical satisfaction, and emotional satisfaction were each statistically significant. Females reported higher marital satisfaction than males. Higher educated individuals expressed less satisfaction within their marriages than those with less formal education. Those that rated their mental health, happiness, and physical and emotional satisfaction high also reported higher marital satisfaction. Participants that reported an absence of sexual quality generally rated their marital satisfaction lower.

Originality/value: Most studies focus on the experiences of younger and middle-aged adults, often excluding older adults. Further, while there have been efforts to focus more research on the relationships of adults in midlife to late life, sexuality is still largely ignored.

Settlement services in Canada have only recently started offering support and programming for emotional wellness issues faced by newcomers to Canada (immigrants who have been in Canada for less than 5 years). Funding for such services has steadily increased over the past 5 years, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Greater investment in ensuring the emotional wellness of immigrants is spurring new settlement services and programming. These include a wide array of configurations and approaches across the different geographies of Canada. This is evidence that providing such services for newcomers is in the early stages of implementation, characterised by experimentation and precarity. Mental and emotional wellness programming is in contrast with more established services, such as those meant to provide language learning, where common assessment tools, measures of proficiency and progress are well established. With funding from the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), this chapter features data from a 2-year project that examined emotional wellness services for immigrants offered in four cities in western Canada between 2018 and 2020. The study used surveys and interviews with clients and focus groups with front-line staff to understand client needs and discern the issues and impact of emotional wellness programming. Findings include apparent limitations in staff capacity and expertise to provide help when needed, the inappropriateness of service models meant for other contexts and complex funding requirements resulting in issues of access and the overall precarity of such programming.

Students with emotional and behavioral challenges are significantly impacted by mental health issues. Teachers and other school staff need mental health knowledge to work more effectively with these students. Collaboration with mental health professionals and sharing of information is essential.

If we are to help diminish some of the negative schooling experiences and behaviour often manifested in Black boys, such as frequent displays of anger, defiance to authority, low self-esteem, and their deployment of coping strategies, which further contributes to their disengagement or expulsion from school, we have to ensure that their health and emotional well-being in schools is optimised. Black boys in the UK comprise the largest proportion of young people who have been excluded from secondary schools, and they are often among one of the lowest groups of underachievers in the UK. It is against these bleak backgrounds of underachievement and disengagement from the mainstream education system that this present study posits the argument for increased targeted intervention, not only to improve academic performance but also to improve the emotional well-being in Black boys. Drawing upon case studies of targeted intervention strategies employed in schools and the community over a period of nearly two decades, by the education charity called Excell3, this chapter argues that greater levels of targeted interventions can result in higher levels of social aspiration, educational attainment, self-esteem and emotional well-being among Black boys.

Within the field of medical sociology, there is an extensive body of literature on notable family transitions and stages in the reproductive cycle, such as getting married or becoming a parent, as they relate to mental health and well-being. However, the transition to becoming a completed family, that is, the process of determining or recognizing that one’s family is complete, is notably absent. In response to this empirical gap, this chapter presents findings from 114 semi-structured interviews with participants who reported having at least one child and who considered their family to be complete. First, the concept of “family completion” is introduced and conceptualized based on the qualitative considerations of participants and the contextual medical sociology literature. Then, thematic considerations around the process of family completion, related emotional preparations, and factors associated with mental health and well-being are explored. Findings suggest that family completion can be an important transitional period for parents and can be associated with emotional hardship for some individuals. Participants described experiencing conflict with their partner if they disagreed on the completion decision, frustration and sadness related to infertility, and/or feelings of loss or depression when completion was regarded as the end of a personal or familial life phase. This chapter concludes that creating a cultural context in which family completion is a recognized family transition period may spur intentional consideration among parents and promote the design of intervention services for parents experiencing changes in mental health or well-being.

Mental health is a universal issue nowadays, and poor mental health is detrimental to any individual's optimal health and well-being. Instead of keeping up with mental health, most civilization encounters the opposite continuum of mental health, a.k.a. mental illness. Unfortunately, mental health issues are more intense during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on public organizations and public servants more severe while rendering their social services to the Malaysian citizens despite the danger of the pandemic to them and their family’s well-being. Hence to cure the disease, manifold ways and means are presented. Most public servants are Malay Muslims and hence recommended treatments are originated from Islam teachings, thus proposing the Islamic Mental Health model to improve their mental health during this intense situation is proper. The model emphasizes on fulfilling the deeds of habluminallah and habluminannas. Habluminannas complements habluminallah as the formation of a complete mental health model from Islamic perspective. Habluminallah focuses on the person's relationship to his Creator, while habluminannas focuses on the person's relationship with others. These two types of morals, that is morals to Allah (habluminallah) which is indicated by the command that Muslims must establish a good relationship with Allah by not associating Allah with others and Muslims also must show morals toward fellow human beings (habluminannas) shown by the command to do good to both parents, close relatives, orphans, poor people, near neighbors and distant neighbors, peers, people on the way, and servants. Habluminallah and habluminannas are two sides of a coin that cannot be separated. The two are the foundation of comprehensive mental health in Islam. So Islam encourages its people to practice both worshiping of the Creator as well as encourages social relations, such as paying attention to the fates of the weak. Even if referred to the pillars of Islam, there is a combination of habluminallah and habluminannas, a combination of vertical and horizontal relations.

Within tertiary education, service-learning can offer deeply engaging and transformational experiences for students, broadening their consideration of a host of social justice issues of our time, including diversity and inclusion. This chapter describes how service-learning interfaces with two areas in particular, both of which have wide-ranging public health implications and are generally misrepresented in public media: poverty and mental health. Representative studies are highlighted and case examples are presented in each domain, concluding with recommendations for future research. The authors argue that service-learning courses addressing social justice issues such as poverty and mental health can lead to deep learning in students if they are sequenced to include both direct service-learning that concretizes the issue and community-based research that highlights the public policy challenges and implications of addressing that issue systemically.

In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), the strengths-based National Empowerment Project (NEP) brought together researchers from across Australia and began to address issues surrounding Aboriginal wellbeing and, in particular, the high rates of Aboriginal deaths by suicide. The NEP utilised participatory action research (PAR) and was concerned with promoting positive cultural, social, and emotional wellbeing (CSEWB) and building capacity and resilience within Aboriginal communities. Throughout the NEP, consultations with 11 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities led to the development of a CSEWB program. The program seeks to increase self-determination and empowerment, developing participants’ awareness of a variety of issues relevant to wellbeing. This enables participants to gain a greater understanding of the holistic nature of CSEWB and the complex influences on Aboriginal wellbeing at individual, family, and community levels. This chapter is concerned with the development and delivery of the CSEWB program within three community sites in Perth, Western Australia. Shared philosophical approaches of the CSEWB program, between UWA and Aboriginal communities were human rights and social justice, community ownership, community capacity building, a strong focus on resilience, empowerment and partnerships, respect for local knowledge, and the delivery of community consultations. Investigation into the impacts of the program are based in an anti-colonial space, employing Indigenous Standpoint Theory and PAR approaches. This chapter demonstrates the success of the CSEWB program, links this success to the vital importance of Indigenous research ethics, and positions the research within an empowering and capacity-building context.