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Wellbeing at work inspires global interest (WHO, 1997, 2010) which shapes international wellbeing whilst ensuring national wellbeing initiatives are devolved. This study is set in Wales, UK; the findings, however, are of interest to the global community as they present ways in which health promotion practices that are essentially salutogenic in nature (Antonovsky, 1987; Mittlemark and Bauer, 2017), may be operationalised through leadership development. The study is contextualised during a time of perceived public service overwhelm, and the purpose of this paper is to explore how a salutogenic model (Gray, 2017) captures a leadership narrative shaped by workplace stress, informing what the authors know about the resilience and wellbeing of leaders.

The salutogenic model used in this exploratory study is based on the theories of Antonovsky (1979, 1987), and the conceptual work of De la Vega (2009). Participants were invited to take part in qualitative conversations, designed to explore leadership from a sense of coherence (SoC) perspective, and identify resilience and wellbeing descriptors across sectors. The data represented the lived experience of leader’s resilience and wellbeing within their work role. A purposeful sample of leaders (N=356) were invited to take part in the project, others were suggested as part of a snowball sampling approach (N=36). The overall participant numbers were N=68.

Using the SoC framework to explore resilience and wellbeing in terms of leadership, enabled participants to make sense of a stressful workplace environment, and share experiential knowledge that contributes to leadership development. The narrative that emerges is one in which leaders are feeling overwhelmed, and the broader influences of BREXIT, workforce and service user demographics, and organisational change are challenges to sustaining resilience. Participants suggest that leaders need to develop self-knowledge/awareness first, and role model the “resilient and well leader” to others.

The limitations of this study relate to the fact that given the potential for participation was nearer 400 leaders, the N=68 participants could not be deemed large enough to generalise the findings. However, this was a scoping study exercise, designed to explore resilience and wellbeing through SoC conversations and to surface descriptors that would add to what the authors know about contemporary leadership. The study could be improved in the future by the collection of more descriptors, and where practical segmentation of descriptors may provide further insight in terms of comparison between professions/sectors.

The authors know that leadership is linked to positive and negative outcomes for employees; it is, therefore, prudent to consider how the authors can support both current and future leaders, to incorporate their own and others’ resilience and wellbeing into their leadership repertoire. This may well be best facilitated through health leadership which is known to have a positive association in determining the psychological climate of the workplace. Leadership authenticity means leaders should be able to ask for help, if leaders are struggling with that, then the authors need to examine leadership from a cultural perspective. In practical terms, the generalised resistance resources (GRRs) put forward by the participants may also form local as well as national wellbeing action plans for the future.

Leadership is socially constructed within the organisational context, and the resilience and wellbeing of leaders is affected by the organisational health determinants in the working environment. If the authors are to consider how leaders are to develop an SoC for themselves and others, the authors need to attend to how the leader learns in the context. This is because their SoC is also shaped by the challenges they experience, and socio-constructed learning becomes neurologically embedded, so that ways of thinking, feeling and behaving are reinforced and exhibited over and over again.

This exploratory study demonstrates the efficacy of the salutogenic model to stimulate dialogue about a potentially sensitive subject. Many of the answers rest with the leaders themselves. The authors held conversations with leaders from the public services in Wales, identified “best self” and “peripheral” variables that leaders manifest across the various organisations they lead, and leaders produced a range of GRRs to support resilience and wellbeing across sectors in the future. There is a growing recognition that in terms of health leadership capability, there will be a premium on knowledge capital that pertains to improving the resilience and wellbeing of employees.

Resilience can protect against workplace stress, benefit psychological wellbeing and promote effective clinical practice in mental health professionals. The purpose of this study was to consider the feasibility and acceptability of resilience training for trainee mental health professionals based on the skills-based model of personal resilience (Baker et al., 2021). The study also aimed to explore the impact of the training on resilience, wellbeing and burnout.

In a within-subject 10-week follow-up study, mixed methods were used to evaluate the one-day resilience training for trainee mental health professionals working in services in the UK.

The intervention was found to be acceptable to attendees, with high levels of satisfaction reported. Resilience was evaluated through self-report measures at three-time points. Resilience scores at follow-up were significantly higher than pre- and post-intervention scores. The secondary outcomes of wellbeing and burnout did not significantly improve.

Preliminary support was found for the feasibility and acceptability of resilience training for trainee mental health practitioners. Audience-specific adaptations and follow-up groups to aid skills practice and implementation may further enhance benefits to resilience. Resilience interventions may supplement practitioner training to improve resilience. Resilience is associated with higher wellbeing and lower burnout. The impact of resilience training on overall wellbeing and burnout remains uncertain; however, newly learned resilience skills may take time to benefit wellbeing.

A key contribution of this study is to provide evidence regarding the feasibility of implementing the skills-based model of personal resilience, outlined in Baker et al. (2021), in a learning environment.

The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the student mental health crisis in Higher Education (HE), and how resilience and grit, two important positive psychological constructs, can be beneficial for university students’ success and wellbeing. As part of a discussion around some of the current approaches to intervening in wellbeing in universities, the chapter provides evidence for the use of PPIs for wellbeing in university students, alongside some of the challenges of implementing these in HE. It also provides an overview of the Thriving Students Framework and presents a case for a multicomponent approach to monitoring and improving educational success. In particular, a wellbeing framework that, alongside resilience, also recognises the importance of strengths, persistence in the face of difficulty, a growth mindset, self-control and mental wellbeing; Academic Tenacity. The implications of utilising this framework for educational attainment in university students are discussed. The Bolton Uni-Stride Scale (BUSS), a single short measure of academic tenacity that combines the attributes enabling measurement and intervention to support university students to thrive, is also presented for educators to use.

The pandemic presented many new challenges is all spheres of life including faith communities. Around the globe, lockdowns took pace at various stages with varying restrictions that included the closure of places of worship which significantly affected the way people serve God and gather as a community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the wellbeing and resilience of members of Christian faith communities in Melbourne (Australia) who had experienced one of the longest lockdowns in the world.

The authors draw on online survey N = 106 collected between November 2021 and May 2021. Participants were over the age of 18 from Catholic, Anglican, Uniting Church, Baptist and Pentecostal/Evangelical faith communities. They employ thematic analysis to analyze, and code open-ended responses from four questions in relation to the research question: In what ways has your wellbeing been impacted during the pandemic?

Melbourne experienced one of the longest lockdown periods in the world between 2020 and 2021 when blended modes of worship forced people to congregate in new and different ways. The empirical insights of participants express their views in relation to celebrating faith and hope, connecting with community, pursuing leisure activities and pursuing leisure in relation to the PERMA model of wellbeing. The findings may resonate with other faith communities in Melbourne and around the globe. They may also lead to new and innovative ways of planning and envisioning modes of worship that may be helpful in a variety of faith contexts.

The research was limited by its sample size (N = 106) and its geographical restriction of Christian faith communities in the Melbourne metropolitan area. This means that broad generalizations cannot be made. Nevertheless, the findings may resonate with other faith communities in Australian and in other parts of the world.

In highlighting the impact COVID-19 had in Australia and ways people balanced their sense of faith and wellbeing, this study raises concerns about the lack of funding that supports mental health initiatives in faith settings and the wider community. The study recommends that faith community leaders and members use informal communication channels to foster hope building wellbeing and resilience, and that pastoral care networks be established in the wider community to promote leisure activities that nurtures social connection, builds faith and resilience.

Whilst the pandemic has provided new openings for members of faith communities to engage with God, the scriptures, each other and leisure, it remains “a balancing act of keeping the faith and maintaining wellbeing”. Such a balancing act may positively enliven a sense of wellbeing and resilience as people continue to navigate the uncertainty inherent in a milieu beginning to be named as “post-Covid”.

This is an original work carried out by the authors. It raises concerns about the lack of funding that supports mental health initiatives in faith settings and the wider community. While much research, news and social media discussed the pandemic's impact on communities, there is an urgent need for ongoing research that encourages, supports and connects people to faith and to leisure activities in order to promote a continued sense of wellbeing as communities begin to transition to a “post-Covid” world. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge about the impact COVID-19 had in Australia and ways people balanced their sense of faith and wellbeing.

This chapter identifies the serious issue of the mental health and wellbeing of English paramedics working in the emergency ambulance service. It identifies the case of the extant top-down performance measurement regime and the absence of indicators of wellbeing in ambulance performance reporting. The impact of such measures on frontline staff and the implications for their motivation and commitment are also documented. More decentralised, open and discursive approaches to performance management in the public sector are advocated as key methods for re-imagining ambulance and wider public services in a global context.

Drawing on relevant literature, the chapter provides the context of the English ambulance service and the challenges it faces with reference to the New Public Management (NPM) and New Public Governance (NPG). Key issues concerning performance metrics and staff wellbeing and welfare are then identified and discussed. The notions of communicative rationality, deliberative democracy and agonistic pluralism are introduced as a framework for analysing the state of both wellbeing and resilience and the performance regime within the English ambulance service. The chapter relates these themes to the re-imagining of public services internationally, proposing a more participative and discursive approach.

It is desirable for the evaluation of public services to include the wellbeing of the healthcare provider, as well as the public service recipient. Additionally, there is a case for greater participative and dialogic engagement to address the intertwined relationship of ambulance staff wellbeing and the performance management regime of the service. The process should be revised, therefore, to take into account the wellbeing of ambulance staff as an integral and intrinsic part of the delivery of the service, and it is recommended that deliberative methods of participation are deployed in reimagining ambulance services and public services more generally.

The challenges facing ambulance services and, more generally, health services globally continue to proliferate and intensify. They are exacerbated by foreseeable contextual challenges such as the demographic profile of patients and service users and budgetary cuts. Traditional and more recent NPM approaches are proving inadequate for this challenge and appear unsustainable in practice. The lack of acknowledgement of welfare indicators in the performance metrics make them unfit for purpose. Our suggested discursive approach would help to re-imagine the service by improving its sustainability and resilience in parallel with the improved wellbeing and personal resilience of the people who provide the service.

The purpose of this paper is to present findings from an evaluation of a mental health resilience intervention for unemployed men aged 45-60. The focus is on examining the place of activities within a multi-dimensional men’s mental health programme, and exploring interactions between social context factors and models of change.

The paper draws on before and after survey data and qualitative interviews, to report results concerning effectiveness in changing men’s perceived resilience, to consider project processes concerning activities, social support and coping strategies, and to situate these within wider environments.

The programme significantly raised the perceived resilience of participants. Activities were engaging for men, while the complex intersection between activities, social networking, and coping strategies course provided opportunities for men to develop resilience in contexts resonant with their male identities.

A limitation is that the evaluation could not measure longer term impacts.

The paper discusses emerging considerations for resilience building, focusing on gender-sensitive approaches which can engage and retain men by focusing on doing and talking, in the contexts of men’s life-course, highlighting embodied (male) identities not disembodied “mental states”, and facilitating social support. There are challenges to recruit men despite stigma, support men to speak of feelings, and facilitate progression.

Potential exists for gender-aware programmes to sustain salutogenic change, co-producing social assets of peer support, male-friendly activities, and context sensitive course provision.

The paper adds fresh evidence of gendered intervention approaches, including effects on male resilience. Application of a context-sensitive change model leads to multi-component findings for transferring and sustaining programme gains.

The purpose of this study is to test the concurrent criterion validity of a new measure, the Career Pathways Survey (CPS) by exploring how women's glass ceiling beliefs are related to five major indicators of subjective career success: career satisfaction, happiness, psychological wellbeing, physical health and work engagement (WE).

Data from a cross‐sectional study of 258 women working in Australian organizations were analyzed. The participants completed the CPS and measures of subjective career success. The CPS assesses four sets of beliefs about glass ceilings: denial, resilience, acceptance and resignation.

Regression analyses showed denial was positively associated with career satisfaction and WE; resignation was negatively related to happiness and both emotional and physical wellbeing; resilience had positive relationships with happiness and WE; acceptance was negatively related to WE. The findings provide support for the hypotheses and the concurrent validity of the CPS.

Given the study uses a cross‐sectional design, causal directions found between variables are inferences. Further research with longitudinal and experimental studies is needed to provide support for these inferences.

Training programs to analyze glass ceiling beliefs after testing with the CPS may be a beneficial strategy to help women identify reasons for their career goals. Feedback from CPS testing might facilitate greater awareness of the causes of women's subjective success in organizations.

The paper is the first to shed light on the connections between these success variables and women's beliefs about glass ceilings.

The purpose of this paper arose out of a Public Mental Health Network meeting in September 2015 and a suggestion then by the editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The British Journal of Psychiatry had just published an editorial by the chief medical officer for England that challenged the current concept of wellbeing, within health policy.

The analysis is structured around three key elements of the chief medical officer’s challenge to the concept of “wellbeing”: has wellbeing been scientifically defined? Does improving wellbeing prevent mental illness? Is there any robust, peer-reviewed evidence to support a wellbeing “approach” to mental health?

Wellbeing is definable provided there is recognition that it has multiple dimensions. At least some of these dimensions relate to health, with most published research focused on personal wellbeing.

This policy analysis addresses the three questions above, within the context of mental health improvement and training for public mental health.

This chapter has been specifically written for readers interested in incorporating positive education into practice. Expanding on concepts and models first introduced in Chapter 1, it starts with an overview of commonly used wellbeing models and frameworks from positive psychology adapted for application in schools. The chapter also explores the significance of positive education in enhancing educator wellbeing and shares experienced-based insights on how positive education has been implemented effectively, or not. As part of this, the chapter identifies common implementation challenges and offers key recommendations for achieving success. Aligned to this book’s overarching objective of connecting theory with practice, it provides empirical and practical insights, including a Positive Psychology in Practice case study of a UK educator’s experience with embedding positive education in further education (FE).