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Athlete burnout is a cognitive-affective syndrome characterized by perceptions of emotional and physical exhaustion, reduced accomplishment, and devaluation of sport. A variety of theoretical conceptualizations are utilized to understand athlete burnout, including stress-based models, theories of identity, control and commitment, and motivational models. Extant research has highlighted myriad antecedents of athlete burnout including higher levels of psychological stress and amotivation and lower levels of social support and psychological need (i.e., autonomy, competence, relatedness) satisfaction. Continued longitudinal research efforts are necessary to confirm the directionality and magnitude of these associations. Moreover, theoretically focused intervention strategies may provide opportunities for prevention and treatment of burnout symptoms via athlete-focused stress-management and cognitive reframing approaches as well as environment-focused strategies targeting training loads and enhancement of athlete psychological need satisfaction. Moving forward, efforts to integrate research and practice to improve burnout recognition, prevention, and intervention in athlete populations likely necessitate collaboration among researchers and clinicians.

Modern society has achieved levels of well-being linked to economic prosperity, better and more extended education, and greater life expectancy. For individuals, improvements in well-being impact positively on friendships and other social relationships, marriage, and work satisfaction. There is no doubt that the future of society depends in great measure on the teachers who work with future citizens. Unfortunately, too many teachers in developed countries suffer from chronic, work-related stress, which negatively affects their health, life satisfaction, vocation, and professional stability in the education system. Ensuring the well-being of teachers is essential to ensure that future generations of citizens receive the best help in their intellectual, emotional, and interpersonal growth. For teachers, certain personality traits can mitigate the effects of stress. Mindfulness and coping strategies can also help to minimize the negative effects of stress, but the most effective way to help student teachers deal with stress is to include specific programs throughout teacher education courses in universities. Starting university is traditionally considered to be a period characterized by many changes that can cause stress among students, such as separation from one’s family, entering the job market, negotiating the student workload, changing address, and attempting to make new friendships. In teacher education, universities are in a position both to improve their students’ lives and to give them information about how to negotiate future professional difficulties. Teacher education programs must maintain constant interest in enhancing the academic performance of the students, and their affective conditions must enrich the exercise and development of students’ virtues and strengths, at the same time as students are offered tools for their working future. The actions promoted to help students develop these virtues and strengths should be accompanied by an effective tutorial action plan, a psychological health service for students, activities to help students acquire self-awareness of character strengths, a mentoring plan, tutoring among students, teamwork, programs to develop coping strategies, the organization of educational material, discipline, full class control, programs to optimize students’ time management, guidance on negotiating the increasing levels of bureaucracy in education, creative exercises to compensate for the lack of resources, collective exercise (sports), artistic activities, programs of mindfulness, religious practice, and volunteer work. Education students need to have a university experience that provides them with numerous opportunities to develop values, competences, attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, an identity, and coping strategies that will help them to be better professionals, more conscientious citizens, and happier individuals.

Self-determination theory (SDT) is a macro theory of human motivation that utilizes concepts essential for organizational psychology. Among the concepts are types and quality of motivation and basic (i.e., innate and universal) psychological needs. Further, the theory has specified social-environmental factors that affect both the satisfaction versus frustration of the basic psychological needs and the types of motivation. The social-environmental factors concern ways in which colleagues, employees’ immediate supervisors, and their higher-level managers create workplace conditions that are important determinants of the employees’ motivation, performance, and wellness. In addition, SDT highlights individual differences that also influence the degrees of basic need satisfaction and the types of motivation that the employees display. This theoretical framework has gained increasingly attention within the context of work the last 15 years, showcasing the importance of basic psychological needs and type of work motivation in explaining the relation from workplace factors to work behaviors, work attitudes and occupational health.

Hope lies at the core of human psyche. It has a unique power to propel individuals, groups, organizations, and communities to action and can sustain their energies to help them achieve their goals. Hope is differentially conceptualized and studied as an emotion; as a positive motivational state incorporating elements of pathways and agency thinking and also as goals pursuit cognitions that can cause emotions; and, lately, as a character strength. Thus, hope research and practice transverses major theoretical and applied fields of psychology (namely positive) developmental, educational, and counseling psychology. Long-established links between hope and well-being places it in a unique position to affect positive youth development through positive education practices but also to enhance physical and mental health and positive psychosocial adaptation throughout the life cycle with the use of successful approaches in therapy and counseling. Established criteria for hope-based interventions and programs were developed all over the world with the express dual aim to enhance well-being and reduce psychopathology in different populations, ranging from children, adolescents, youths, and adults with and without physical and mental health problems and learning disabilities; and also across various settings, as diverse as educational institutions, therapy and counseling, recreational centers, and correctional facilities. Overall, hope-based interventions were successful in enhancing positive psychosocial outcomes and reducing depression and other problems. Underlying mechanisms that drive hope programs include the development of upward spirals of positive emotions that help people build enduring psychosocial resources; the process of goal setting and pursuit in itself; and the identification of optimal combinations of individual characteristics and intervention goals and techniques. A wide range of individual factors, such as participants’ and implementers’ characteristics and levels of motivation, in addition to contextual factors such as protocols, research designs, techniques, materials, analyses, and reporting choices impact the effectiveness of hope interventions. Future research can benefit from targeted hope interventions, matching specific needs, skills, and capacities of people and groups in different settings, including educational, therapy, organizational, and community ones, which can greatly improve academic performance, physical and mental health, productivity, and life quality.

The sport and performance environment is highly demanding for its actors. Therefore, recovery from work and sports requires special attention. Without adequate recovery, optimal performance is not attainable. It depends, however, on the individual what adequate recovery actually is. An extremely demanding event for someone may not be as demanding for someone else. Every individual perceives his or her environment differently and therefore has to choose his or her response or prevention strategy accordingly. Monitoring one’s recovery-stress states might be a promising starting point to establish individual baselines and further regulate training or work intensities. Relaxation in terms of implementing systematic relaxation techniques seems to be an adequate approach. These techniques can be divided into muscle-to-mind and mind-to-muscle techniques focusing either on the training of one’s sensitivity to muscle tension or on the cognitive processes involved in relaxation. Whether the recovery process is finally successful depends on if the chosen methods fit the purpose of recovery (i.e., response to cognitive or physical demands), the setting/circumstance (i.e., time and place), and how comfortable one feels with the specific recovery strategy.

The relationship between environmental ethics and the application of economic values to the environment has followed two main paths: (1) blocking attempts to value the environment economically by extending the concept of moral standing to elements of the natural world, and (2) attempting a pragmatic reconciliation that harnesses the efficacy of economic motivation while avoiding the excesses of an exclusively economic perspective. The pragmatic reconciliation must still come to grips with several ethical issues that confront environmental valuation. The fact that economics is grounded in a utilitarian consequentialism renders it susceptible to some long-standing deontological challenges having to do with rights and justice. Other challenges include a reluctance to embrace value pluralism, overly ambitious attempts at pricing, failure to incorporate deeper value commitments that do not take the form of preferences, and the inadequacies of a preference-satisfaction account of well-being.

A social impact assessment (SIA) is the process of analyzing (predicting, evaluating, and reflecting) and managing the intended and unintended consequences on the human environment of planned interventions (policies, programs, plans, projects) and any social change processes brought into play by those interventions so as to bring about a more sustainable and equitable biophysical and human environment. This subfield of impact assessment attempts to identify future consequences of a current or proposed action related to individuals, organizations, and social macro-systems. SIA is policy-oriented social research often referred to as ex ante evaluation, which involves pre-testing actions/interventions, or analyzing consequences.

The concepts of trauma and trauma-informed care have evolved greatly over the past 30 years. Following the Vietnam War, professional understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increased. The greater understanding of trauma and its effects on war veterans has extended to informing our comprehension of trauma in the civilian world and with children and families who have experienced abuse, neglect, and other traumatic events. This elevated insight has led to the development of evidence-based models of trauma treatment along with changes in organizational policies and practices designed to facilitate resilience and recovery. This paper highlights the concept of trauma-informed care by providing an overview of trauma and its effects, then providing a comprehensive description of our understanding of trauma-informed care across child- and family-serving systems.

American social and economic justice advocates, social workers included, have struggled to establish a national mindset that welfare is a right, a duty owed to the people by government, not a privilege that can be revoked at will. Industrialized nations with a universalistic, rights-based philosophy have strived to provide citizens with some measure of a basic, minimum income; the United States has not, yet. The United States has been hobbled by ideology; a two-tier system consisting of assistance and insurance; and cultural misgivings about direct, ongoing public payments (welfare) to the poor. Revitalization of a national welfare rights movement, early signals from the Biden administration, and awareness that major social policy changes most often happen at times of crisis offer reasons for a degree of optimism. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath are a moment in time—an inflection point—when social workers, because of their training, ethical codes, skill sets, and appreciation of the lessons of social welfare history, could play a key role in charting a new course of action suited to 21st-century needs and realities.

Organizational happiness is an intuitively attractive idea, notwithstanding the difficulty of defining happiness. A preference for unhappiness rather than happiness in an organization would be out of tune with community expectations in most societies, as would an organization that promoted unhappiness. Some argue that organizational happiness is a misconception, that happiness is a personality trait and organizations cannot have personality. Others suggest that organizational happiness is derived from, or at least dependent on, the happiness of the individuals in the organization. A third approach involves virtue ethics, linking organizational happiness to virtuous organizations. Some discussion of the nature of happiness is needed before consideration of these three approaches to the concept of organizational happiness. If one leaves aside the notion of happiness as a psychological state, there remain three main views as to the nature of happiness: one based on a hedonistic view, which grounds happiness in pleasure, one based on the extent to which desire is satisfied, and one where happiness is linked to a life of virtuous activity and the fulfillment of human potential. Some would see no distinction between all three senses of happiness and what is called well-being. Whether or not organizations can experience happiness is to some extent determined by whether happiness is considered subjective well-being, fulfilled desire, or virtue and to some extent by one’s view of the moral nature of corporations. There are dangers in the unfettered pursuit of happiness. Empirical research is impacted by questions of definition, by changes over time for both individuals and society, and by the difficulty that arises from reliance on self-reported data. Recent decades have seen the publication of quantitative assessments of organizational happiness, despite the difficulty of constructing scales and manipulating data, and the problems of effectively taking into account cultural, organizational, and individual differences in concepts of happiness. Potential research questions fall into two groups, those that seek a better understanding of what happiness is and those that seek to collect data about happiness in pursuit of answers to questions about the benefits of happiness.

Study of the intersection of work with nonwork components of individuals’ lives has most often focused on roles within nuclear and extended families but is increasingly focused on nonwork domains beyond family, such as roles within friendships, communities, leisure activities, and the self. In line with the focus of most existing literature on the family-specific domain within nonwork lives, the nonwork domain will generally be referred to here as “family.” One popular conceptualization of linking mechanisms between work and family differentiates between work-family conflict or stress, which occurs when a work role and a nonwork role are not fully compatible and results in some type of physical or psychological strain. Alternatively, work-family enrichment occurs when participation in one role benefits life in the other role. Concepts similar to work-family enrichment include work-family positive spillover and work-family facilitation; all emphasize the ways in which one role can positively impact another role. Additionally, the popular concept of work-family balance highlights either a state of low conflict and high enrichment or the presence of effectiveness and satisfaction in both roles. Broadly speaking, the links between work and family are bi-directional, such that the work domain can influence the family domain, the family domain can influence the work domain, and both can occur simultaneously. Work-family conflict and enrichment have been tied to important employee outcomes, including work (e.g., absenteeism), family (e.g., family satisfaction), and domain-unspecific outcomes (e.g., physical and psychological health), as well as to organizational outcomes (e.g., market performance). Working conditions contributing to work-family conflict and enrichment are frequently characteristic of lower wage jobs, such as low levels of control over work, high work demands, low levels of supervisor support, shift work, and temporary work that can lead to unpredictable schedules, high degrees of job insecurity, and increased health and safety hazards. Researchers are presented with unique challenges as the workplace continues to change, with more dual-earner couples, an increasingly aging workforce, and surges of technology that facilitates flexible work arrangements (e.g., telecommuting). Nonetheless, researchers and organizations work to explore relationships between work and family roles, develop policies related to work and family (i.e., national, state or local, and organizational), and build evidence-based interventions to improve organizations’ abilities to meet employees’ needs.

It is difficult and sometimes impossible for organizations to design jobs that fit all employees due to increased complexity and uncertainty in the workplace. Scholars have proposed that employees can make changes to their jobs themselves by engaging in job crafting. Job crafting is defined as self-initiated change that employees make in their work to better fit their abilities, needs, and preferences. Employees can craft their jobs individually and collaboratively, as a team. Two main theoretical perspectives have been proposed, which are distinct in how they define job crafting. The application of these two job crafting perspectives has brought some confusion about the construct of job crafting and how it is measured, and has resulted in some challenges in synthesizing empirical studies. To reduce this confusion, scholars have integrated the two distinct job crafting paper; we begin by introducing the definitions and measurements of individual job crafting and team job crafting. Specifically, theories of job crafting are reviewed from two perspectives using three distinct categorizations, with approach crafting versus avoidance crafting identified as the most important. A great number of empirical studies have been conducted to investigate the consequences of job crafting and factors that affect it. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have shown positive effects of approach job crafting for employees, such as increased job satisfaction, motivation, work engagement, organizational commitment, and job performance, and decreased strain and turnover intentions. However, avoidance crafting has been associated with burnout and lowered job performance. Organizational factors and individual factors that affect individual job crafting have been identified, including job autonomy, organizational support, leadership, proactive personality, self-efficacy, and regulatory focus. Beyond antecedents and outcomes of job crafting that have been systematically reviewed in the literature, studies on job crafting have also (a) empirically tested the interrelationships of different job crafting constructs, (b) uncovered new forms of job crafting, (c) unraveled the complicated effects of job crafting, (d) unpacked the influences of social context in job crafting process and outcomes, (e) considered job crafting in different populations and contexts, (f) investigated the effect of cultural differences on job crafting, and (g) investigated antecedents and outcomes of team job crafting. Finally, evidence has shown that job crafting behaviors can be trained: intervention studies show the effectiveness of job crafting interventions in stimulating job crafting behaviors and related positive outcomes such as well-being, engagement, and performance.

Parents and children continue to impact each other’s lives across the life course. Intergenerational relationships affect older adults’ physical and psychological well-being in a multitude of complex processes. Contact and interaction with adult offspring, as well as both giving and receiving support and caregiving, can have either positive or negative effects on parents’ well-being, depending upon whether these experiences are perceived by the older adults as enriching, harmonious, and desired. Furthermore, the impact of parent–adult child relations on older adults’ health is shaped by social structural characteristics of families and individual family members, such as race, ethnicity, and gender, as well as by cultural contexts within and across nations. Generally, close intergenerational relationships characterized by high levels of contact and reciprocal exchanges of support positively affect older parents’ well-being, whereas tense intergenerational relationships characterized by adult children’s problems or disregard for older adults’ values and autonomy negatively affect older parents’ well-being.

The interdisciplinary study of oceans and human health is an area of increasing global importance. There is a growing body of evidence that the health of the oceans and that of humans are inextricably linked and that how we interact with and affect our oceans and seas will significantly influence our future on earth. Since the emergence of modern humans, the oceans have served as a source of culture, livelihood, expansion, trade, food, and other resources. However, the rapidly rising global population and the continuing alterations of the coastal environment are placing greater pressure on coastal seas and oceans. Negative human impacts, including pollution (chemical, microbial, material), habitat destruction (e.g., bottom trawling, dredging), and overfishing, affect not only ecosystem health, but also human health. Conversely, there is potential to promote human health and well-being through sustainable interactions with the coasts and oceans, such as the restoration and preservation of coastal and marine ecosystems. The study of oceans and human health is inherently interdisciplinary, bringing together the natural and social sciences as well as diverse stakeholder communities (including fishers, recreational users, private enterprise, and policymakers). Reviewing history and policy with regard to oceans and human health, in addition to known and potential risks and benefits, provides insights into new areas and avenues of global cooperation, with the possibility for collaboratively addressing the local and global challenges of our interactions with the oceans, both now and in the future.

Democratic leadership suggests that leadership can include people rather than treating them simply as followers of a leader. Understanding what this means conceptually, and its implications for practice in schools and other educational settings, raises complex and challenging issues. The concept of democracy has a variety of meanings. The concept of leadership itself is much debated, with increasing attention being given to the idea that in practice it is a distributed and emergent phenomenon involving not only senior leaders but also numerous others who contribute to leadership through everyday interactions. A narrow, minimalist idea of democratic leadership sees it as a style of leadership that a principal or headteacher might adopt so that others, such as staff and students, feel consulted and included. This has limited potential for transforming education. A broader conception, with greater relevance to education, sees democratic leadership as having a much richer and more ambitious focus. A rich perspective of democratic leadership not only promotes power sharing and transforming dialogue that enhances understanding (rather than entrenching people’s existing views and self-interests) but also cultivates holistic learning as rounded, ethical “citizens” of the organization and relational well-being through a community that fosters both belonging and individuality. Democratic leadership that is rich in this way encourages a sense of agency across the school and addresses power differences so the practice of democratic leadership becomes a shared, collaborative process in which all as co-leaders contribute proactively to innovation and the life of the school. It also recognizes the importance of the structural context from which leadership as a complex, distributed phenomenon emerges. Democratic leadership grows from and is expressed through enabling structures, such as a culture that explicitly shows that inclusive participation is valued and institutional spaces and resources that provide opportunities for power sharing, transforming dialogue and the growth of holistic learning and relational well-being. Both (enabling) structures and (participative and empowering) agency are essential features of democratic leadership.

In contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, perfectionism is widely understood as the idea that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. As such, debates over perfectionism occupy a central place in contemporary political philosophy because political philosophers are deeply concerned about whether or not a liberal state is permitted to promote any particular ethical or religious doctrine or impose it on its citizens. In general, contemporary perfectionists do not argue for the state’s pursuit of any religious doctrine. They only maintain that the state is permitted to make a wide range of public policies with the aim of promoting the good life. These policies, commonly found in liberal democratic societies, may include subsidizing museums and art galleries, preserving cultural heritage, setting up public libraries and providing free access to reading materials, encouraging athletic excellence, conserving nature and biodiversity, and educating citizens about the harm of recreational drugs. Nevertheless, perfectionism remains controversial among philosophers and political scientists. It might be beneficial to take a sympathetic view of perfectionism and consider how perfectionists might defend their position against some of the common objections. These objections mainly include: (a) that the state does not possess legitimate authority to make decisions about the good life and seek to promote it; (b) that perfectionist policies are generally illiberal and paternalistic; and (c) that conceptions of the good life are objects of reasonable disagreement and hence cannot legitimately be promoted by the state. In addition, the nature and importance of perfectionist policies and politics will be discussed.

With the rapid rise of the aging population, how to provide support and care for older adults has become an increasingly important issue across the world. One way of such provision in many societies has been through adult children. An important concept, attitude, and practice in this regard is filial responsibility. This article first looks into the definition of filial responsibility and its ethical foundation or theoretical underpinning as manifested in various theories. Next, the article examines changes and continuity in filial responsibility in the face of modernization and other social and cultural changes. To better understand the many faces of filial responsibility, the article discusses parental expectations of filial responsibility and the attitudes and practices of adult children. The extent of offspring’s filial responsibility attitude as a predictor of actual support and care to parents is discussed. In addition, to comprehend the effects of filial responsibility on individual well-being, this article examines not only the effects of parental expectations of filial responsibility on their well-being but also the consequences of fulfilling filial responsibility on offspring’s well-being. Finally, the article examines the relationship between filial responsibility and policy and the implications of filial responsibility for the helping professions, including social work.

The profession of social work increasingly experiences the damaging impact of professional burnout, staff turnover, and compromised services. Organizational wellness involves planful efforts to address these concerns and promote employee well-being. A rationale for organizational wellness is articulated, including its value for social work. The evolving paradigm of a holistic, systemic approach to organizational wellness is then discussed. Next, how social work is ideally situated to lead organizational wellness efforts is detailed as an arena of macro practice and as providing a framework for designing and developing an organizational wellness culture. Using social work competencies, social workers can use this framework to provide leadership in conceptualizing, planning, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining organizational wellness. Further critical considerations underscore how this leadership promotes the profession’s mission, supports the profession’s viability, and establishes a vital arena for ongoing macro practice.