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Research has shown that Indigenous people suffer significant health inequalities in comparison to dominant colonising cultures. Evidence shows that these inequalities can be addressed by gaining a deeper understanding of the social and cultural determinants of health, applying Indigenous views of health and developing better definitions of the term wellbeing. The following chapter draws on research exploring the relationship between Indigenous culture, the landscape and the connection with health and wellbeing. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, consideration of Indigenous Māori is a national imperative, enshrined in the Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) which establishes it as a bicultural country. Exploring three Māori health models, the chapter examines the factors that play a significant role in shaping Māori people's health. It relates how landscape is a foundational therapeutic aspect of Māori wellbeing using the models to express the forces that impact both positively and negatively on this relationship. The chapter concludes that all three concepts, culture, health and landscape, are interconnected and must be balanced to reduce Māori health inequalities and to provide a more sustainable model for health and wellbeing for all New Zealanders.

This paper aims to explore the well-being impacts of social enterprise, beyond a social enterprise per se, in everyday community life.

An exploratory case study was used. The study’s underpinning theory is from relational geography, including Spaces of Wellbeing Theory and therapeutic assemblage. These theories underpin data collection methods. Nine social enterprise participants were engaged in mental mapping and walking interviews. Four other informants with “boundary-spanning” roles involving knowledge of the social enterprise and the community were interviewed. Data were managed using NVivo, and analysed thematically.

Well-being realised from “being inside” a social enterprise organisation was further developed for participants, in the community, through positive interactions with people, material objects, stories and performances of well-being that occurred in everyday community life. Boundary spanning community members had roles in referring participants to social enterprise, mediating between participants and structures of community life and normalising social enterprise in the community. They also gained benefit from social enterprise involvement.

This paper uses relational geography and aligned methods to reveal the intricate connections between social enterprise and well-being realisation in community life. There is potential to pursue this research on a larger scale to provide needed evidence about how well-being is realised in social enterprises and then extends into communities.

To understand how people using community public mental health services conceptualize community and their place within it within the post-deinstitutionalization era.

Two hundred ninety-four service users completed structured interviews in two urban, outpatient, public, and community mental health facilities in the Northeast. Quantitative and qualitative responses to the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, Community Ladder version, were analyzed to understand perspectives on community.

Mean subjective community status ladder score among participants was five (SD = 2.56). Participants identified four broad categories of definitions of community: geographic community; community related to social definitions; contributing to society; and mental health service-user communities. Explanations for the location of their placement on the ladder (subjective community status) include comparisons to self and others, contributions to community, and social relationships. There was also a set of explanations that spoke to the intersection of multiple marginalizations and structural constraints. Finally, we explore relationships among understandings of community and perceptions of place within community.

Community integration is a critical concept for community public mental health services, but little research has explored how mental health service users conceptualize their communities and their roles within them. Understandings of community are crucial to appropriately support peoples’ needs within their communities. Furthermore, participants identify mechanisms that facilitate their personal community standing, and these are areas for potential intervention.

This study, guided by the feelings-as-information theory, aims to explore the effect of recovery experience of wellness tourism (REWT) on place attachment, alongside an examination into the mediating role of self-perceived health and the moderating role of health goal salience. The research site was traced for two years to monitor the evolution of the proposed model during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The successive independent samples data (in 2020 and 2021, respectively) were collected in Shizhu county, China. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used with a survey of 1,472 wellness tourists (N₂₀₂₀ = 494, N₂₀₂₁ = 978) to test research hypotheses empirically. Additionally, independent sample t-test and multi-group SEM analysis were used to compare the mean difference of variables and coefficients’ difference between 2020 and 2021.

This study reveals that REWT can increase self-perceived health, resulting in a positive influence on place attachment. By tracing the research site and comparing the successive independent samples data, we found a stronger recovery experience effect of wellness tourism on place attachment alongside a weaker effect on self-perceived health in 2021. The positive relationship between self-perceived health and place attachment is significantly strengthened when health goals are salient.

This study investigated the mechanism behind the formation of place attachment in the wellness tourism context and extended understanding on the dynamic nature of the REWTand ongoing evolving person-place relationship during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also provided practical suggestions to benefit industry practitioners by enhancing current understanding of improving experience-based management in wellness destinations.

This article discusses the role that gardening, horticulture and farming can play in promoting mental well‐being and in supporting the recovery of individuals with mental health problems.

The purpose of this paper is to test the feasibility of utilising an Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) model in the context of an Alcohol and Other Drug Therapeutic Community, and to use this as a way of assessing how TCs can contribute to the local communities in which they are sited.

This is a qualitative action research project, based on an evolving model in which key stakeholders from participating sites were instrumental in shaping processes and activities, that is a partnership between a research centre, Turning Point in Melbourne, Australia and two Recovery Services operated by the Salvation Army Australia Eastern Territory (TSA). One of these is the Dooralong Transformation Centre on the Central Coast of New South Wales and the other, Fairhaven, is in the Gold Coast hinterland of Queensland, Australia. The project was designed to create “rehabilitation without walls” by building bridges between the treatment centres and the communities they are based in, and improving participation in local community life. This was done through a series of structured workshops that mapped community asset networks and planned further community engagement activities.

Both of the TCs already had strong connections in their local areas including but not restricted to involvement with the mutual aid fellowships. Staff, residents and ex-residents still in contact with the service were strongly committed to community engagement and were able to identify a wide range of connections in the community and to build these around existing Salvation Army connections and networks.

This is a pilot study with limited research findings and no assessment of the generalisability of this method to other settings or TCs.

Both TCs are able to act as “community resources” through which residents and ex-residents are able to give back to their local communities and develop the social and community capital that can prepare them for reintegration and can positively contribute to the experience of living in the local community.

This paper has significant ramifications for how TCs engage with their local communities both as a mechanism for supporting resident re-entry and also to challenge stigma and discrimination.

The paper and project extend the idea of ABCD to a Reciprocal Community Development model in which TCs can act as active participants in their lived communities and by doing so can create a “therapeutic landscape for recovery”.

The purpose of this paper is to present an Australian case study and to explore how social enterprises may be conceptualised as spaces of well-being, that is the ways in which social enterprises, not explicitly delivering health services, may be producing health and well-being benefits for those who come into contact with them.

A case study in Australia is used to explore in depth the mechanisms of well-being production. Data were collected using ethnographic observation, focus groups and walking interviews. Data were analysed using thematic analysis, GIS and the lens of therapeutic assemblage.

The case study social enterprise produces well-being as integration, capability, security and therapy. The social enterprise acts as a therapeutic assemblage with well-being “spoken”, “practiced” and “felt” within the social enterprise. The ways in which well-being is generated are often linked to the productive element of enterprise – and have the potential to contribute to tackling several contemporary health challenges and inequalities relating to, for example, a lack of physical activity and levels of social isolation.

This paper draws on a single Australian case study but points to the need for further in-depth work in the area of social enterprise and health.

The paper advances our understanding of how social enterprises may be linked to health and well-being. It goes beyond quantification of, for example, number of clients helped, to consider the wider experience of well-being for those who come into contact with social enterprises.

Sociological research on transgender and gender nonconforming (t/gnc) people has emphasized the interplay between identity and institutional contexts as constraining through dominant ideologies on sex and gender. In contrast, feminist research focused on embodied trauma has demonstrated numerous prospects for healing. In bridging these two fields of study through a socio-phenomenological lens, this research shows how consciousness emerges, facilitating the development of bodily agency. Empirically, the paper examines whether t/gnc people can use movement-based activities for healing, and how that healing occurs in particular spaces. In reflection of the impacts of insidious traumas on both the body and mind, this paper radically re-centers the body to consider the potential for healing through movement. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews with t/gnc people on their engagement with movement-based activities, I argue that participation in movement, on one’s own terms, enables a practice of bodily freedom. Moving beyond constraint and regulation, bodily agency requires a degree of bodily awareness (consciousness) that can emerge through participation in movement-based activities in t/gnc-centered and “personally-public” spaces. These results show that movement-based activities support t/gnc people in healing from the impacts of insidious traumas. These findings have empirical importance, exemplifying the power of fostering intentionality through movement practices, as well as theoretical implications for understanding the role of the body when exercising agency in processes of healing from embodied oppression outside of formal therapeutic landscapes.

Based on ethnographic data and a textual analysis, this chapter highlights the process of “therapization” of Buddhism in Western countries, with a specific emphasis on Tibetan Buddhism in France. Referring to the paradigm of “political economy of health”, as developed in recent medical anthropology, it attempts to explore the relationships between two concepts – economics and health – that had previously been considered separately, in the context of Western Buddhism. Further, this chapter's aim is to expose a potential application of theoretical economic models in an anthropological approach of Buddhist diffusion and appropriation in the West.

The Philippines’ nationwide campaign on drugs has been under the limelight due to its controversial approaches in dealing with the problem of addiction. Despite the government’s current efforts, substance use disorders continue to persist within the population. The purpose of this paper is to provide recommendations for addressing the issue of substance use disorder treatment through a modification of the therapeutic community (TC) in the Philippine context.

This conceptual paper reviews the existing facts about the Philippines’ campaign against drugs, the approaches implemented by the government, current state and research developments of TCs, and its resulting impact on contemporary evidence-based treatment for addiction in the country.

A treatment framework outlining a recovery-oriented therapeutic community (ROTC) is presented. The ROTC aims to address addiction as a chronic, relapsing disease. This alternative approach for addiction treatment in the Philippines is based on the concept of recovery, principles of effective substance use disorder treatment, and recent developments in TC best practices from the international community.

This paper discusses different recommendations for policy development, interventions and research, aimed at improving the odds of securing recovery for people suffering from addiction.