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Globally millions of children have a parent who is imprisoned. Research suggests that this has an adverse impact on the child and imprisonment of a parent is considered to be an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Parental incarceration will not only affect the child but the entire household and may result in further ACEs such as household dysfunction and parental separation making this group of children particularly vulnerable. This scoping review aims to adopt an international perspective to comprehensively examine the extent range and nature of literature both published and grey relating to parental incarceration and the potential impact on children’s emotional and mental health.

In this scoping review, the five stages identified by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) were used including identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, study selection, charting data, collating, summarising and reporting results. In addition, the included studies were appraised for quality using methodology-specific tools. A critical narrative synthesis was adopted to present findings and discussion.

Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Of the included studies, eight were retrieved from peer-reviewed journals and one from grey literature searching. Five categories with subcategories were identified affecting children’s mental health: 1) Relationships: parent and incarcerated child relationship; facilitators and barriers to maintaining contact; 2) Family structure; maternal or paternal incarceration; living arrangements during parental incarceration; 3) Children’s emotions: emotional recognition and regulation; resilience; 4) Prison stigma: social stigma; shame and secrecy; 5) Structural disadvantages: poverty; race/ethnicity.

This scoping review has highlighted how the imprisonment of a parent negatively affects their children’s emotional and mental health. Factors negatively impacting children’s emotional and mental health are interrelated and complex. Further research is required, including differences between paternal and maternal incarceration; impact of gender and age of child; poverty as an ACE and prison exacerbating this; and effects of ethnicity and race. An important policy direction is in developing an effective way of capturing the parental status of a prisoner to ensure that the child and family receive needed support.

This chapter explores the concept of allyship in social justice struggles. It provides a road map for self-reflection as well as acquisition of skills necessary for effective allyship. It describes appropriate roles for allies in dismantling systems and structures that protect the privilege of the majority in various contexts – privilege often unseen, unacknowledged and/or actively denied. This chapter will examine unique roles of allies in exposing, challenging, and dismantling privilege and white supremacy. Concrete examples of benefits that have accrued to white Americans through privilege – both conscious and unconscious, are assessed. The reader will be encouraged to explore personal areas of privilege and marginalization and acknowledge multidimensional identities (race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, etc.) of individuals and unique lived experiences. Those seeking authentic positions of allyship are challenged to root out embedded privilege/white supremacy through direct action.

Black boys report experiencing more school-based racial discrimination than any other group (Butler-Barnes et al., 2019). Additionally, Black boys are viewed as older and less innocent than their peers beginning as early as 10 years old (Goff et al., 2014). Black boys are also suspended and expelled at much higher rates than other students (Graves & Wang, 2022). As such, there needs to be an investment in asset-based research designed to understand the factors that can help Black boys cope with these perceptions. Consequently, this chapter will discuss strengths based protective factors that will aid in the promotion of positive outcomes in Black boys.

In this chapter, the authors outline some of the history of the role of diversity in research and research management, how this has changed and the consequences it has for a workable definition of diversity. We describe the benefits and challenges when working with diversity as research managers and administrators (RMAs) in international research producing organisations (RPOs). The challenges differ in different parts of the world which brings new complexities to navigate. It is shown how the agendas of internationalisation and diversity do not always work well together due to cultural and political perspectives in areas including race, age, gender identity, sexual orientation and other characteristics. The authors suggest how ‘Cultural Intelligence’ (CI) can be used as a frame for RMAs working with diversity and internationalisation both in a pre- and post-award phase and outline some specific steps and initiatives RMAs can take to create equitable and inclusive research and research environments based on their practical experience in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges, interplay and potential directions for future service research to address the first three Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty, zero hunger and good health and well-being.

This commentary examines how service research has addressed these SDGs in the literature, and through the development of a theory of change, the authors propose an agenda for service research going beyond serving, to enabling and transforming service systems, expanding the current focus on individual to community and population well-being through promotion and prevention.

Service research has increasingly advocated human-centered approaches but requires a shift towards an all of humanity perspective. Individual and collective well-being have gained attention in service research, emphasizing the importance of considering collective well-being.

The commentary underscores the need for a comprehensive approach to develop services that contribute to the well-being of the human species. It calls for research that transcends dyadic interactions, considers systemic dynamics and broadens the focus from individual to collective and population well-being.

This paper discusses important societal issues of poverty, hunger and good health and well-being and the need for integrated and ecosystem approaches to develop equitable and sustainable solutions for collective well-being.

While SDGs 1, 2 and 3 address individual goals, they collectively underpin the well-being of communities and societies.

This underscores individual and social implications for how mental disorders and mental well-being are constructed, conceived of and treated. Further, this paper aims to examine positive psychology’s role in supporting the advancement of a broader systemic and contextual approach to mental health. With that aim, this paper connects data on mental health and well-being with peace studies to describe the systems of value and social ecologies underpinning mental disorders, using public happiness/Felicitas Publica as a possible framework to enhance public mental health while intervening at the local level (Bruni and Zamagni, 2007; Marujo and Neto, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2021; Marujo et al., 2019).

Theoretical foundations and data on positive peace and mental well-being are described with the intention to propose a systemic, contextual, relational, communitarian, economic and sociopolitical perspective of well-being that goes beyond individual bodies and/or brains and, instead, views mental disorder and mental health as social currency (Beck, 2020).

The interventions using dialogic, conversational and community approaches are a possible path to promote peace, mental health and public happiness.

Examining the interplay between the fields of positive psychology, mental health and cultures of peace, this work contributes to the broadening of research and subsequent intervention topics through transdisciplinary approaches while reinforcing the role of systemic and social determinants and complementing the prevalent medical model and intraindividual perspective of mental health and well-being.

Adopting positive psychology to address mental health through public happiness concepts and interventions opens opportunities to respond to the ebb and flow of social challenges and life-giving opportunities. Therefore, the paper intends to articulate actor-related, relational, structural and cultural dimensions while moving away from discrete technocratic and individual models and pays attention to the way their implementations are aligned with both individual and social needs.

The work offers an inclusive, equalitarian, politically sensitive approach to positive mental health and positive psychology, bringing forward a structural transformation and human rights-based approach perspective while rethinking the type of social and political solutions to mental health issues.

Creating a critically constructive debate vis-à-vis the fluidity and complexity of the social world, the paper examines mental health and positive psychology simultaneously from a “hardware” (institutions, infrastructures, services, systems, etc.) and a “software” (i.e. individuals and community/societal relations).

The author explored the direct and indirect relationships between policing and citizen satisfaction, considering both the policing and neighborhood context at the regional level.

The author conducted regression and path analysis based on the combined data of 190 local governments from the Korean National Police Agency, the Korean Crime Victim Survey and Statistics Korea.

Patrol officers, a public safety budget, criminal arrests and perceived safety were positively associated with citizen satisfaction, whereas drinking rate was negatively associated with citizen satisfaction. The arrest rate partially mediated the relationship between the public safety budget and citizen satisfaction. In addition, the relationship between drinking rate and citizen satisfaction with police was partially mediated by perceived safety.

Police and local governments should enhance citizen satisfaction by improving poor indicators of policing and neighborhood context and by considering the dynamics between factors.

Studies analyzing the mediating effects on citizen satisfaction with police are still lacking.

This qualitative study focused on how girls' high school coaches in the United States Southwest thought about Latina teens' participation in school sports. Semi-structured interviews with coaches (4 women, 11 men) indicated they continue to rely on cultural (deficit) discourses implicating girls' families and culture when discussing Latina teens' sports participation. Coaches suggested that Latina teens' parents do not see the value of sports for girls, do not view sports as a pathway to college, are not involved or interested in their daughters' participation for cultural reasons, and are overly productive. These conceptualizations shape coaches' recruitment and pedagogical strategies within school sports contexts. More critical reflections could aid coaches and schools in developing more adaptive school contexts and strategies to better meet the needs of Latina teens and their families.

The paper seeks to explore the drivers of disaster planning in African-American households. While the paper is exploratory, the authors attempt to dialogue with substantial theoretical and applied research around vulnerability and disaster. Race, ethnicity and vulnerability are issues deeply entangled with American disaster preparedness and response. In this study, the authors hope to illuminate the threads which bind them together and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between race, ethnicity, class and preparedness.

Data for this project come from a disaster planning question placed on the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). The authors analyze a split sample of around 5,000 African-American households descriptively and with multinomial logistic regression.

Disaster planning among African-American households is a product of past experiences, concern about other hazards, social trust and gender identity. These results are similar to other findings within the study of household preparedness and help to advance the understanding of predictors within the African-American community. Key drivers such as income, education level, gender identity, social trust and perceptions of other risks are consistent with previous studies.

This project is the first to examine issues of disaster planning utilizing a national sample of African-American households via the one-of-a-kind 2020 CMPS.

The purpose of this study is to test the modulating role and threshold of governance quality in the cost of living–energy poverty nexus.

Two-step System Generalized Methods of Moment empirical model with linear interaction between cost of living and governance quality was estimated. This study used data on 40 African countries over 20 years (2000–2019).

The paper shows that the conditional effect of inflation on energy poverty is negative. Thus, governance quality acts as a moderator on the relationship between inflation and energy poverty beyond a threshold. The study's principal practical implication is that governance quality reverses inflation's positive unconditional effect on energy poverty, and governance quality may be improved beyond specific policy-defined thresholds to achieve the desired goal of lowering energy poverty. Nonetheless, governance quality at initial stages would not drive the needed reduction in energy poverty unless it goes beyond the threshold of 0.03, 0.02 and 0.07.

This study recommends that policymakers should initiate policies that would ensure increased access to clean energy.

This study's main contributions are that the authors estimated the threshold beyond which governance quality reverses the adverse impact of inflation on energy poverty. Further, the authors have shown that governance quality is a catalyst to reduce energy poverty.