Mood

Depression im Alter – Eine Frage der Emotionsregulation

Becker-Hingst, Nadine · 2023

Ästhetik des Depressiven

· 2023

The Language of Melancholy

Vinkesteijn, Robert · 2025

This book explores how the demise of the traditional language of melancholy lies at the root of contemporary difficulties in engaging with darker aspects of human affective experience. Melancholy – or melancholia – was a concept transmitted for millennia through a living tradition involving philosophers, physicians, poets, theologians, novelists and artists. Over the years, varied analogies, metaphors, images and ideas amassed around this notion of melancholy, and those suffering from it had powerful means to speak and write about their experiences. After the discarding of melancholy as a diagnostic entity in the 20th century for the specialized professional discourse of anxiety and depressive disorders, this rich language, unfortunately, also disappeared from the public eye. Vinkesteijn reexamines the philosophical and existential value of this language, drawing the figures and images of its tradition out of the shadows, and showcasing its beauty and expressive potential in their own words. This volume will be of interest to a broad audience of academics, students, and general readers interested in the history of ideas, philosophy, psychiatry, mental illness, and the historical and contemporary cultural discourse of depressive disorders.

Depression und Biographie

Trevisan, Amina · 2019

Gender and Emotion

· 2013

Women express more emotion than men, but do they also experience more emotion than men? Are emotions represented differently in men and women’s brains? What are the origins of gender differences in emotions – are we born different or is it socialization that renders us different? What are the implications of gender differences in emotion for general well-being, insomnia, depression, antisocial behavior, and alexithymia? What are the most appropriate methodologies for the empirical study of gender differences in emotional experiences? In the current book, coordinated by The Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, these questions are answered by reviewing research on general emotional expression and experience, but also on specific emotions and affective experiences such as shame, empathy, and impulsivity. We propose an interdisciplinary contribution to the field of gender and emotions, with works authored by specialists in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, economics, philosophy, and anthropology.

Emotions, Senses, Spaces: Ethnographic Engagements and Intersections

· 2016

This volume draws together three core concerns for the social sciences: the senses and embodiment, emotions, and space and place. The chapters engage with intersections between space, sense and emotion through a range of experiences and activities including dance, bullfights, healing ceremonies, celebrations and music. The authors herein critically examine diverse contexts, in and through which relations between sensate bodies, spaces and places, and emotions are constituted. The chapters draw on long-term ethnographic fieldwork from which the authors critically engage with their material on a fundamental level and contribute to contemporary debates about the nature and experience of emotions, the sensing body, and spaces and places.

Complexity in Second Language Study Emotions

Sampson, Richard J. · 2022

This book offers a socially situated view of the emergence of emotionality for additional language (L2) learners in classroom interaction in Japan. Grounded in a complexity perspective, the author argues that emotions need to be studied as they are dynamically experienced and understood in all of their multidimensional colors by individuals (in interaction). Via practitioner research, Sampson applies a small-lens focus, interweaving experiential and discursive data, offering possibilities for exploring, interpreting and representing the lived experience of L2 study emotions in a more holistic yet detailed, social yet individual fashion. Amidst the currently expanding interest in L2 study emotions, the book presents a strong case for the benefits of locating interpretations of the emergence of L2 study emotions back into situated, dynamic, social context. Sampson’s work will be of interest to students and researchers in second language acquisition and L2 learning psychology.

From Melancholia to Depression

Jansson, Åsa · 2021

This is a historical analysis, not an experimental study—it traces how the concept of melancholia was gradually transformed between the 1830s and 1900 from a broad, moral-spiritual condition into a narrow biomedical mood disorder, which set the stage for today's diagnosis of clinical depression; for self-experimenters, the key takeaway is that the very definition of "depression" is historically contingent, meaning your personal experience of low mood may not fit neatly into modern diagnostic categories, and you should measure your own specific symptoms rather than relying solely on a label.

Emotions in Late Modernity

· 2019

This international collection discusses how the individualised, reflexive, late modern era has changed the way we experience and act on our emotions. Divided into four sections that include studies ranging across multiple continents and centuries, Emotions in Late Modernity does the following: Demonstrates an increased awareness and experience of emotional complexity in late modernity by challenging the legal emotional/rational divide; positive/negative concepts of emotional valence; sociological/ philosophical/psychological divisions around emotion, morality and gender; and traditional understandings of love and loneliness. Reveals tension between collectivised and individualised-privatised emotions in investigating ‘emotional sharing’ and individualised responsibility for anger crimes in courtrooms; and the generation of emotional energy and achievement emotions in classrooms. Debates the increasing mediation of emotions by contrasting their historical mediation (through texts and bodies) with contemporary digital mediation of emotions in classroom teaching, collective mobilisations (e.g. riots) and film and documentary representations. Demonstrates reflexive micro and macro management of emotions, with examinations of the ‘politics of fear’ around asylum seeking and religious subjects, and collective commitment to climate change mitigation. The first collection to investigate the changing nature of emotional experience in contemporary times, Emotions in Late Modernity will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology of emotions, cultural studies, political science and psychology.

Happiness and Wellness

· 2023

This book is a collection of chapters on happiness and well-being. It includes contributions from scientists from all over the world, who present different, multifaceted, dialectically open perspectives and sensitivities regarding happiness. The authors discuss happiness and well-being from biological, biopsychosocial, anthropological, and philosophical points of view.

Unfair Emotions

Blatter, Jonas · 2025

This book provides a novel philosophical account of the unfairness of certain emotions. It explains how the concept of unfairness can be applied to emotions and how emotions can be the proper objects of second-person moral evaluation. Emotions are an integral part of our moral practices. While the links between emotions and morality have received much philosophical attention recently, the phenomenon of unfair emotions remains under-explored. This book examines an everyday phenomenon that we often perceive other people’s emotions as unfair, in a similar way as if they acted unfairly. It argues that the notion of unfairness combines elements of the unfittingness and of the moral relevance of an emotion. In the first half of the book, the author shows how an unfair emotion can wrong another person. His account holds that an emotion is unfair to its target if its inherent action tendencies constitute a directed moral hazard to the targeted person. In the second half, the author examines to what extent we are responsible for feeling an unfair emotion, and in what way we can – and cannot – be held accountable for it. He argues not only that emotions can be unfair but also that there are limits to when we may hold people accountable for them. Unfair Emotions will appeal to scholars and graduate students working in ethics, philosophy of emotion, moral psychology, and cognitive psychology. The Open Access version of this book, available at www. taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license. Any third party material in this book is not included in the OA Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. Please direct any permissions enquiries to the original rightsholder. The Open Access version of this book was published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Chapter Antidepressant Drugs and Pain

Berrocoso, Esther · 2012

Computer modelling & simulation

Affective Injustice in Healthcare

Bogaert, Brenda · 2025

This book explores the ambiguous role of affects in healthcare work and medical education. At the same time that healthcare professionals are often encouraged to suppress or downplay their affects in order to maintain a sense of professionalism, those of patients are frequently misunderstood or unheard - both within clinical settings and beyond. We argue that these are examples of affective injustice, instances in which emotional expression is dismissed as unprofessional, unproductive, or inappropriate in healthcare. We show that the suppression of affects is not only unrealistic but also potentially harmful, and how it can lead to burnout and dissatisfaction among healthcare providers as well as negatively affect care quality, in particular for marginalized groups. The ambition of the book is therefore to bring this controversial issue to the forefront and to demonstrate the value of affects in healthcare and medical education, as well as to offer several methodologies for greater affective expression and recognition in healthcare institutions.The first part of the book lays the theoretical groundwork, examining the relevance of the concept of affective injustice for healthcare, and the problems that affective injustice creates for care actors and for care quality. The second part offers some practical methodologies to move toward affective justice for patients and healthcare providers. Proposals include narrative methods, spiritual care, emotionally responsive hospital design and architecture, the possibilities and limits offered by patient research partners, and pedagogies for medical education. The book will end by showing how to take the framework forward, in particular through empirical bioethics research.This book will be of interest to scholars and educators in medical ethics, interdisciplinary researchers in the medical humanities, as well as patients, families, and healthcare providers interested in the role of affects in healthcare.

Happiness and the Psychology of Enlightenment

· 2025

Whilst happiness usually comes from how we think and feel about our life (eventbased wellbeing), enlightenment is an internal experience not sourced from this process (inner wellbeing). In this volume, we look from a scientific point of view at the different approaches to enlightenment and the practices that trigger it. This includes classical Western approaches to contemplation and aesthetics, Eastern Buddhist notions of satori, modern predictors of selftranscendent experiences, assessments of current practitioners and their characteristics, Christian notions of mysticism, Hindu yoga practices, the neuroscientific correlates of flourishing, and the psychological stages in the journey to enlightenment. We explore the evidence of these states, traits and experiences, the concepts underpinning them, and the affect, cognition and behaviour they transform.

Chapter Neuropharmacogenetics of Major Depression: Has the Time Come to Take both Sexes into Account?

Papadopoulou-Daifoti, Zeta · 2012

This review argues that sex differences in neurotransmitter systems, drug metabolism, and genetic variants mean that antidepressant treatments should be tailored differently for men and women — and that most existing research has failed to account for this, potentially masking effective treatments or causing unnecessary side effects in one sex.

Chapter 20 Embodiment and space in understandings of suicide and self- harm

Yue, Emily · 2025

This handbook critically examines spaces of mental health and wellbeing across multiple, often intersecting, domains from green and blue spaces to lived and embodied spaces, creative spaces, work and home spaces, and institutional and post-institutional spaces. The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Wellbeing features 45 chapters from leading international scholars who collectively interrogate the spatial dimensions of mental health and wellbeing from conceptual and experiential viewpoints. The ways in which these theoretical developments prompt a re-thinking of mental health and wellbeing as concepts is also discussed before presenting some highlights from the handbook’s five main sections – (1) green and blue spaces, (2) lived and embodied spaces, (3) creative spaces, (4) work and home spaces, and (5) institutional and post-institutional spaces. The key benefits of this book include a great appreciation of the complex networks and assemblages of mental health and wellbeing, the value of a geographical/spatial approach to thinking about mental health, and the vast array of spaces and places that are implicated in human and posthuman notions of wellbeing. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities as well as researchers and practitioners in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, health geography, social and cultural geography, anthropology, mental health social studies, cultural theory, and architecture.

Emotion and Proactivity at Work

· 2021

"EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Individuals’ behaviours at work are known to be shaped by cold, or cognitive-motivational, processes as well as hot, or affect-motivational, processes. To date, employee proactivity research has mainly focused on the ‘cold’ side. But emotion has been proposed to ‘energize’ employees’ proactivity, especially in interdependent and uncertain work environments. In this pioneering work, expert scholars offer new thinking on the process by examining how emotion can drive employees’ proactivity in the workplace and how, in turn, that proactivity can shape one’s emotional experiences. "

The Light Inside the Shadow

· 2013

You are not alone! BlueBoard is an online community for people concerned about mental health problems including depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, eating disorders, borderline personality and related disorders. There are forums for people working on their own recovery and for friends and family members. The aim of BlueBoard is to enable people to reach out and both offer and receive help. BlueBoard is free, anonymous and available at any time from around the world. The delivery of BlueBoard is supported by funding from the Australian Department of Health.

Chapter 8 Vulnerability through the Invulnerable Transhuman Lens

Chapman, Ana · 2024

This chapter examines representations of mental conditions in the dystopian backdrop for transhumanism in Netflix’s series Maniac. In the quest for human perfectionism, vulnerabilities are exposed and intensified by technological disruption. The transhumanist promise of human enhancement is presented in the series as hindering basic affect, self-awareness, and emotional response that in turn makes for human relational interdependence. Accordingly, it focuses on how the invulnerable transhuman figure is posed as a threat to subjectivity and autonomy. Vulnerability studies, ethics of care, neuroscientific theories on emotional sensations (interoception and exteroception awareness), and posthumanism give support to the chapter’s main thesis that this series posits characters’ fundamentally relational essence for wellbeing as based on rather different ethical grounds from those seen in the transhumanist paradigm, which is based on individualism, independence, autonomy and/or self-sufficiency via technology. For this study, theories on transhumanism, vulnerability, emotional, and ethical studies are introduced to give way to the analysis of the series. Firstly, the chapter explores Maniac’s representation of technology and mental health in a setting where characters seem to be in search of connections to move on to a discussion of the implications of relational and emotional engagement for characters’ wellbeing and autonomy.

Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Wellbeing

· 2025

This handbook critically examines spaces of mental health and wellbeing across multiple, often intersecting, domains from green and blue spaces to lived and embodied spaces, creative spaces, work and home spaces, and institutional and post-institutional spaces. The Routledge Handbook on Spaces of Mental Health and Wellbeing features 45 chapters from leading international scholars who collectively interrogate the spatial dimensions of mental health and wellbeing from conceptual and experiential viewpoints. The ways in which these theoretical developments prompt a re-thinking of mental health and wellbeing as concepts is also discussed before presenting some highlights from the handbook’s five main sections – (1) green and blue spaces, (2) lived and embodied spaces, (3) creative spaces, (4) work and home spaces, and (5) institutional and post-institutional spaces. The key benefits of this book include a great appreciation of the complex networks and assemblages of mental health and wellbeing, the value of a geographical/spatial approach to thinking about mental health, and the vast array of spaces and places that are implicated in human and posthuman notions of wellbeing. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and the humanities as well as researchers and practitioners in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, social work, nursing, health geography, social and cultural geography, anthropology, mental health social studies, cultural theory, and architecture.

Chapter Study of textile handcrafting practices on women creator’s psychological well-being

Sharma, Pragya · 2023

A qualitative study of 30 women textile handcrafters in India found that regular engagement in textile crafts (embroidery, weaving, knitting, quilting) was associated with self-reported improvements in mood, stress reduction, and sense of accomplishment, but the study provides no quantitative effect sizes, no control group, and no objective measures — making it useful as inspiration for self-experimentation but insufficient as evidence of causal benefit.

Humanistic Wellbeing

Vittersø, Joar · 2025

This open access book seeks to change the way we think about happiness and the good life. It starts ambitiously by exploring how the biological question, “What is life?” can be integrated with the philosophical question, “What is good?” It ends with a radical idea for how scientific reasoning can include a value-based theory of the good life. Anchored in basic knowledge about human nature, the new humanistic theory of wellbeing suggests that a life is good to the extent that it allows us to perform our humanness well. The theory further defines a well-performed humanness as the fulfilment of three universal human needs: the need for stability, the need for change, and the need to and for care. To reach this standpoint, the author critically examines major concepts in the wellbeing literature, such as values, happiness, life satisfaction, affect, hedonia, eudaimonia, and the good life. Based on these reviews, the author argues that a science of wellbeing cannot be strictly descriptive and value-free. A life should not be considered good only because it feels good or is thought of as good for the person living it. A good life must also be committed to a universal morality. Therefore, the humanistic theory of wellbeing suggests that it is good to like one’s life, but even better to like it for the right reasons.

Human Flourishing

· 2023

This open access book presents a novel multidisciplinary perspective on the importance of human flourishing. The study of the good life or Eudaimonia has been a central concern at least since Aristotelian times. This responds to the common experience that we all seek happiness. Today, we are immersed in a new paradoxical boom, where the pursuit of happiness seems to permeate everything (books, media, organizations, talks), but at the same time, it is nowhere, or at least very difficult to achieve. In fact, it is not easy to even find a consensus regarding the meaning of the word happiness. Seligman (2011), one of the fathers of the positive psychology, confirmed that his original view the meaning he referred to was close to that of Aristotle. But, he recently confessed that he now detests the word happiness, since it is overused and has become almost meaningless. The aim of this open access book is to shed new light on human flourishing through the lenses of neurosciences and health, organizations, and arts. The novelty of this book is to offer a multi-disciplinary perspective on the importance of human flourishing in our lives. The book will examine further how different initiatives, policies and practices create opportunities for generating human flourishing.

Chapter 13 Can we empathize with emotions that we have never felt?

Vendrell Ferran, Íngrid · 2025

This volume brings together two philosophical research areas that have been subject to increased attention: work regarding the unique character of having an experience and studies on the nature and powers of imagination. The importance of imagination seems to stand in tension with the assumed unique and irreplaceable role of experience in our lives. However, new arguments in various philosophical debates suggest that there is a need to examine how both areas of research interrelate and can enrich one another. The chapters in this volume examine whether the traditional accounts of experience and imagination need to be challenged. They are divided into thematic sections that discuss epistemological, ontological, normative, phenomenological, and intersubjective questions related to experience and imagination. Imagination and Experience is an essential resource for scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of psychology.

Animal Emotions

Davis, Kenneth L. · 2020

Animal Emotions: How They Drive Human Behavior gives a concise overview of ancient mammalian emotions deeply rooted in the human brain. Jaak Panksepp, a world-renowned neuroscientist, dedicated his life career to the study of mammalian emotions and he carved out seven distinct emotional systems he called seeking, lust, care, and play (positive emotions), and fear, anger, and sadness (negative emotions), all exerting a tremendous influence on human behavior.Christian Montag, a neuroscientist and psychologist, and a long-time collaborator of Jaak Panksepp, revisits together with Kenneth L. Davis, one of Jaak’s PhD students, Panksepp’s theories and provides the reader with new insights into the nature of emotions and their role as survival tools, both for animals and for humans. They also raise new questions about the background of the research field Jaak Panksepp coined "Affective Neuroscience." How are personality and psychopathology linked to animal emotions? Do animals feel the same way as we do? What are our emotional needs in a digital society, and what is key to a happy life?

Professional Emotions in Court

Wettergren, Åsa · 2018

Professional Emotions in Court examines the paramount role of emotions in the legal professions and in the functioning of the democratic judicial system. Based on extensive interview and observation data in Sweden, the authors highlight the silenced background emotions and the tacitly habituated emotion management in the daily work at courts and prosecution offices. Following participants ‘backstage’ – whether at the office or at lunch – in order to observe preparations for and reflections on the performance in court itself, this book sheds light on the emotionality of courtroom interactions, such as professional collaboration, negotiations, and challenges, with the analysis of micro-interactions being situated in the broader structural regime of the legal system – the emotive-cognitive judicial frame – throughout. A demonstration of the false dichotomy between emotion and reason that lies behind the assumption of a judicial system that operates rationally and without emotion, Professional Emotions in Court reveals how this assumption shapes professionals’ perceptions and performance of their work, but hampers emotional reflexivity, and questions whether the judicial system might gain in legitimacy if the role of emotional processes were recognized and reflected upon.

Die Biomarkerisierung der Depression

Rüppel, Jonas · 2024

Schon lange versuchen Psychiatrie und klinische Psychologie, der Depression auf den Grund zu gehen. In den letzten Jahrzehnten richten sich die Forschungsanstrengungen auf Biomarker, das heißt biologische Parameter, mit denen depressive Erkrankungen greifbar gemacht und im Körper verankert werden sollen. Jonas Rüppel arbeitet mit einem Fokus auf genetische und neurowissenschaftliche Studien heraus, dass diese Suche nach Biomarkern jedoch nicht in der ersehnten körperlichen Fundierung resultiert. Stattdessen mündet die »Biomarkerisierung der Depression« in einer zunehmenden Destabilisierung dieses psychiatrischen Krankheitsbildes. Erkennbar wird ein neues psychiatrisches Dispositiv, das auf eine Dekonstruktion und biowissenschaftliche Neuzusammensetzung der etablierten Krankheitskategorien abzielt: das »postgenomische Prisma«. Lizenzierung: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Le laboratoire des esprits animaux

Gerber, Lucie · 2022

Chapter Digital wellbeing and design

Borbála, Timár · 2023

Transport: general interest

The Psychosomatic Assessment

· 2012

This is not a single experimental study but a methodological textbook/volume that compiles and explains clinimetric tools (validated questionnaires and interview methods) for assessing psychosocial factors in medical patients — it provides a toolkit for measuring subjective experiences like stress, personality, illness behavior, and well-being, but offers no original data on intervention effects.

Chapter Humors, Passions, and Consciousness in Descartes’s Physiology: The Reconsideration through the Correspondence with Elisabeth

Muller, Jil · 2023

By pushing Descartes to more clearly explain the union of body and soul beyond the functioning of a ‘strong’ passion, namely sadness, Elisabeth wants Descartes to review his idea of the passions, and his understanding of the ‘theory of the four humors’. This chapter aims at showing that Descartes turns away from Galen’s theory of the humors, which he globally adopts in the 1633 Treatise of Man. With the shift in his conceptualization of the humors between this Treatise and the Treatise of the Passions (1649), Descartes analyzed more specifically the inner feelings, consciousness, and the passions, by considering that a man is not simply a body, but a psychophysical being, with a body and a soul.

A History of Male Psychological Disorders in Britain, 1945–1980

Haggett, Ali · 2015

Statistically, women appear to suffer more frequently from depressive and anxiety disorders, featuring more regularly in primary care figures for consultations, diagnoses and prescriptions for psychotropic medication. This has been consistently so throughout the post-war period with current figures suggesting that women are approximately twice more likely to suffer from affective disorders than men. However, this book suggests that the statistical landscape reveals only part of the story. Currently, 75 per cent of suicides are among men, and this trend can also be traced back historically to data that suggests this has been the case since the beginning of the twentieth-century. This book suggests that male psychological illness was in fact no less common, but that it emerged in complex ways and was understood differently in response to prevailing cultural and medical forces. The book explores a host of medical, cultural and social factors that raise important questions about historical and current perceptions of gender and mental illness.

Chapter Conceptualizing and Measuring Mental Health

Sheila K. Hanson, Emily H. Rosado-Solomon - http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0239-5619 · 2025

This is an introductory book chapter that maps the conceptual landscape of mental health measurement in workplace research, arguing that current approaches are fragmented and often fail to capture the lived experience of diverse employees — which matters for self-experimenters because it highlights why you cannot rely on a single scale or one-off measurement to understand your own mental health.

Emotional Imprints of War

van Lange, Milan · 2023

Historical research can be enhanced by methods and resources from various disciplines, ranging from psychology to computer linguistics. With a creative and innovative perspective on »things we think we know«, Milan van Lange presents a computer-assisted historical investigation into the role of emotions in dealing with consequences of World War II in the Netherlands. By »emotion mining« digitised sources, van Lange shows where emotions were present and how they were expressed and discussed in the political engagement with people who experienced long-term effects of the war, such as former collaborators and war criminals, the resistance, and war victims.

Happiness and Wellbeing in Singapore

Lun, Yuen Wei · 2024

To present a multifaceted and holistic perspective of what makes Singaporeans happy, Tambyah, Tan and Yuen discuss the findings and insights from the 2022 Quality of Life Survey, which examines the perceptions and views of 1,905 Singapore citizens. This is the latest survey in a series of studies on the wellbeing of Singaporeans. While the impact of the COVID- 19 pandemic on wellbeing is a timely discussion, the findings are also compared with previous surveys conducted in 2011 and 2016 to provide a longitudinal perspective of how Singaporeans’ wellbeing has evolved over the years. Key aspects of this topic include life satisfaction and satisfaction with specific life domains, aspects of affective wellbeing (e.g., happiness, enjoyment and achievement), economic wellbeing, psychological flourishing, personal values, value orientations and views on socio- political issues. Pertinent differences due to demographics such as gender, marital status, age, education and household income are also highlighted. The book also features four archetypes and clusters of Singaporeans, which are representative of the unique demographics, values and wellbeing outcomes examined. The findings and insights will be useful to academics, policy makers, practitioners, students and the general public who are interested in understanding the life satisfaction and wellbeing of Singaporeans.

Exploring Creative Wellbeing Frameworks in Context

· 2025

This timely edited monograph develops conceptual frameworks for creative wellbeing, exploring the impact on people’s lives and its contribution to a sustainable future, by examining case studies of how creative wellbeing is practised in a variety of contexts. Using sociocultural perspectives of creativity, the authors call to attention everyday wellbeing and the possibilities for a rich life using creative wellbeing as an action competence. Chapters use a diverse range of epistemological positions, embracing quantitative, qualitative, and posthumanist methodologies to explore how integrated nature-culture perspectives can enhance the understanding of creative wellbeing when informed by engagement in natural contexts, but also by the deep connection between nature and culture in creating meaning. Ultimately furthering research into creative wellbeing, improving practice, and inspiring nature and culture practices for all, this book will be of benefit to researchers, postgraduate students, and scholars interested in creative approaches to mental health, positive psychology, and environmental psychology, and creativity and transcendence more broadly.

21st Century Media and Female Mental Health

Thelandersson, Fredrika · 2023

This open access book examines the conversations around gendered mental health in contemporary Western media culture. While early 21st century-media was marked by a distinct focus on happiness, productivity and success, during the 2010s negative feelings and discussions around mental health have become increasingly common in that same media landscape. This book traces this turn to sadness in women’s media culture and shows that it emerged indirectly as a result of a culture overtly focused on happiness. By tracing the coverage of mental health issues in magazines, among female celebrities, and on social media this book shows how an increasingly intimate media environment has made way for a profitable vulnerability, that takes the shape of marketable and brand-friendly mental illness awareness that strengthens the authenticity of those who embrace it. But at the same time sad girl cultures are proliferating on social media platforms, creating radically honest spaces where those who suffer get support, and more capacious ways of feeling bad are formed. Using discourse analysis and digital ethnography to study contemporary representations of mental illness and sadness in Western popular media and social media, this book takes a feminist media studies approach to popular discourse, understanding the conversations happening around mental health in these sites to function as scripts for how to think about and experience mental illness and sadness

Mental Health | Atmospheres | Video Games

· 2022

Gaming has never been disconnected from reality. When we engage with ever more lavish virtual worlds, something happens to us. The game imposes itself on us and influences how we feel about it, the world, and ourselves. How do games accomplish this and to what end? The contributors explore the video game as an atmospheric medium of hitherto unimagined potential. Is the medium too powerful, too influential? A danger to our mental health or an ally through even the darkest of times? This volume compiles papers from the Young Academics Workshop at the Clash of Realities conferences of 2019 and 2020 to provide answers to these questions.

Digital Healthcare and Expertise

Egher, Claudia · 2023

This open access book explores how expertise about bipolar disorder is performed on American and French digital platforms by combining insights from STS, medical sociology and media studies. It addresses topical questions, including: How do different stakeholders engage with online technologies to perform expertise about bipolar disorder? How does the use of the internet for processes of knowledge evaluation and production allow for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder to reposition themselves in relation to medical professionals? How do cultural markers shape the online performance of expertise about bipolar disorder? And what individualizing or collectivity-generating effects does the internet have in relation to the performance of expertise? The book constitutes a critical and nuanced intervention into dominant discourses which approach the internet either as a quick technological fix or as a postmodern version of Pandora’s box, sowing distrust among people and threatening unified conceptualizations and organized forms of knowledge.

Acting Emotions

Konijn, Elly · 2000

Actors and actresses play characters such as the embittered Medea, or the lovelorn Romeo, or the grieving and tearful Hecabe. The theatre audience holds its breath, and then sparks begin to fly. But what about the actor? Has he been affected by the emotions of the character he is playing? What's going on inside his mind? The styling of emotions in the theatre has been the subject of heated debate for centuries. In fact, Diderot in his Paradoxe sur le comedien, insisted that most brilliant actors do not feel anything onstage. This greatly resembles the detached acting style associated with Bertolt Brecht, which, in turn, stands in direct opposition to the notion of the empathy-oriented "emotional reality" of the actor which is most famously associated with the American actingstyle known as method acting. The book's survey of the various dominant acting styles is followed by an analysis of the current state of affairs regarding the psychology of emotions. By uniting the psychology of emotions with contemporary acting theories, the author is able to come to the conclusion that traditional acting theories are no longer valid for today's actor. Acting Emotions throws new light on the age-old issue of double consciousness, the paradox of the actor who must nightly express emotions while creating the illusion of spontaneity. In addition, the book bridges the gap between theory and practice by virtue of the author's large-scale field study of the emotions of professional actors. In Acting Emotions, the responses of Dutch and Flemish actors is further supplemented by the responses of a good number of American actors. The book offers a unique view of how actors act out emotions and how this acting out is intimately linked to the development of contemporary theatre.

Positive design

Desmet, Pieter · 2020

In 2015, a new journal was launched: the Dutch Journal of Positive Psychology. The editor-in-chief invited me to contribute with a regular column that reflects on the question of how design can contribute to the field of positive psychology. I was immediately excited because I saw an opportunity to share some of our students’ inspiring work with a wider audience. Hence, we agreed that the columns would serve to present examples of Positive Design – design cases that focus on human flourishing, by students and researchers of the TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Over the years, I have witnessed how an increasing number of design students have become inspired by the concept of well-being. These are designers who aspire to consciously and deliberately use their design skills in contributing to the happiness of individuals and communities. Rather than being a fortuitous by-product of design, well-being has firmly anchored itself in the heart of these students’ design intentions. I hope the columns convey some of their irrepressible enthusiasm. This is the second edition of the Positive Design booklet. It presents columns 11 to 19, written between 2018 and 2020. Some of the design cases focus on individuals, others on groups. Some help us to rediscover our talents, some support us in forming meaningful relationships, and others enable us to invest in our own happiness and that of those we care about.

CBASP@YoungAge

Brakemeier, Eva-Lotta · 2023

This is a study protocol for a pilot trial testing whether a modular, caregiver-involved version of the Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy (CBASP) is feasible and potentially effective for treating depression in children and adolescents aged 10–21, compared to treatment-as-usual — but no results are reported yet, so this page describes what the researchers plan to do and why it matters for anyone designing a self-experiment involving interpersonal relationships and mood.

Buddhism and Psychiatry

Kelly, Brendan · 2025

This Open Access book explores the emergence of mindfulness from Buddhist tradition and its incorporation into contemporary mental health and social care. Mindfulness is a powerful technique, but it needs to be applied mindfully. Buddhist thought has older links with psychiatry and mental health care, prior to the current embrace of mindfulness, and these have not been articulated clearly over recent decades. These links are intrinsically valuable and have added relevance in an era of mindfulness. This book seeks to bring these associations and connections back to light and contextualise recent enthusiasm for mindfulness-based interventions. This book is aimed at readers who are interested in mental health, psychiatry, Buddhism, and mindfulness. These are all growing areas of interest and inquiry. This book is distinctive owing to its focus on links between psychiatry, mental health care, and Buddhism that include, but also move beyond, mindfulness. This book is also distinctive by virtue of the fact that it is written by someone who is both a psychiatrist in clinical practice and a researcher, as well as being qualified in Buddhist Studies (MA, University of Sunderland, 2010) and Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MSc, University College Dublin, 2023), and publishes across all of these fields.

Chapter Disabilities and wellbeing

Shepherd, Joshua · 2018

This chapter argues for a normative distinction between disabilities that are inherently negative with respect to wellbeing and disabilities that are inherently neutral with respect to wellbeing. First, after clarifying terms I discuss recent arguments according to which possession of a disability is inherently neutral with respect to wellbeing. I note that though these arguments are compelling, they are only intended to cover certain disabilities, and in fact there exists a broad class regarding which they do not apply. In section three I discuss two such problem cases: Locked-in Syndrome and the Minimally Conscious State. In section four I explain why these are cases in which possession of the disability makes one worse off overall. I do so by explicating the notion of control over one’s situation. I argue that disabilities that significantly impair control over one’s own situation – e.g., Locked-in Syndrome and the Minimally Conscious State – strongly tend to be inherently negative with respect to wellbeing, while disabilities that do not strongly tend to be inherently neutral. The upshot is that we must draw an important normative distinction between disabilities that undermine this kind of control, and disabilities that do not.

Introducing Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement

Rai, Sunita · 2023

Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) integrates Mindfulness and Wellbeing to realize human flourishing and the attainment of happiness. This 9-session program, conducted over 8 weeks, enhances wellbeing, happiness and quality of life through self-understanding and self-awareness. The first part of the book is devoted to presenting mindfulness, wellbeing, the happiness paradigm and the curriculum of the Mindfulness-Based Wellbeing Enhancement (MBWE) program. It presents the foundations of mindfulness-based programs, and how mindfulness intersects with wellbeing. The authors argue, with the support of evidence, that mindfulness is well placed to promote human flourishing rather than limiting its relevance to stress reduction and preventing depression relapse. Several chapters are devoted to presenting the MBWE program comprehensively with weekly agendas, homework, handouts, facilitation guides and practice scripts. The second part of the book presents the evidence base of mindfulness, cultural adaptations for different populations, the therapeutic effectiveness of group learning inherent in Mindfulness-Based Programs and the often-untold history of mindfulness. The authors present the often-neglected Asian roots of Mindfulness and justify how secular Mindfulness, as taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn, is influenced by multiple wisdom traditions as opposed to it being a solely Buddhist practice. This book serves as a hands-on resource for trained mindfulness teachers, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, counsellors, social workers, practitioners, educators, coaches, and consultants. It is also suitable for anyone who is interested in the appreciation of mindfulness and human flourishing.

Body Image in Eating Disorders

Izydorczyk, Bernadetta · 2022

Body Image in Eating Disorders explores issues relating to the prevention, clinical diagnosis, and psychological treatment of distortions of body image in eating disorders. It presents a multifactorial model of indicators for diagnosis and treatment, considering psychological, sociocultural, and family indicators. Based on original empirical research with women and girls suffering from eating disorders, the book draws attention to limitations and dilemmas related to psychological diagnosis and treatment of people with eating disorders including anorexia readiness syndrome, bulimia, and bigorexia. The book proposes an integrative psychodynamic approach to the diagnosis and treatment of body image disorders and presents case studies illustrating examples of application of integration of psychodynamic therapy and psychodrama in psychological treatment of young people suffering from eating disorders. It considers risk factors including abnormal body image for the development of eating disorders and argues that psychological diagnosis of the body image is an important factor in determining the right direction of psychological treatment for people with eating disorders. Drawing on theoretical foundations and evidence-based clinical practice, the book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of clinical and applied psychology, mental health, and specialists in eating disorders.

Chinese Mental Health Scale Translation

Ji, Meng · 2024

This open access book illustrates the key steps and procedures of developing mental health scales into linguistically and culturally appropriate translations. Through illustrative case studies, we demonstrate that traditional forward and backward translation have significant methodological limitations when applied in mental health scale translation, such as linguistic and cultural inaccessibility and inaccuracy in the clinic. Our book will stimulate more academic debates and further systematic research into the significant, interdisciplinary area of mental health translation, which has been underexplored in Translation Studies.

Burnout Syndrome

· 2024

This book-length synthesis of burnout research consolidates decades of findings showing that burnout—characterised by emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy—affects approximately 20–30% of healthcare workers and other helping professionals, with individual-level interventions (like cognitive-behavioural therapy and mindfulness) showing small-to-moderate effects (Cohen's d ≈ 0.3–0.5), while organisational-level changes (reduced workload, increased autonomy, social support) produce larger and more sustainable improvements, though high-quality randomised trials remain scarce.

Metabolic Neuropsychiatry

· 2025

This open access book provides an interdisciplinary perspective on energy metabolism in the brain and body in neuropsychiatric disorders and suggests future research directions. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that energy metabolism is aberrant in the body and brain in individuals with major neuropsychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, mood disorders, and neurodegenerative disorders. Emerging therapeutic interventions aim to improve outcomes in many of these common and severe disorders. To foster interdisciplinary dialogue and to promote informed applications in research, medicine, and public health, the Ernst Strüngmann Forum convened scholars from diverse fields to examine the role of energy metabolism in brain function, the bidirectional association between metabolism in the brain and body, and the future therapeutic potential of treatment interventions that improve metabolism in people with psychiatric disorders. Synthesizing the interdisciplinary perspectives that emerged from these discussions, the book is organized in four sections: Role of Metabolism in Brain Function Metabolic Abnormalities in Neuropsychiatric Disorders Systemic Metabolic Aspects of Neuropsychiatric Disorders Metabolism-Based Therapies This volume offers insights to researchers and clinicians working in basic, translational, and clinical research in neurology and psychiatry pertinent to mitochondrial function, energy metabolism, human physiology, and treatment development.

Chapter 10 Breathlessness

Carel, Havi · 2018

This chapter uses a phenomenological approach to investigate the philosophical significance of a common yet debilitating experience: the experience of severe and pathological breathlessness. Using two key examples of breathlessness in the case of respiratory disease (somatic) and in anxiety disorders (considered as mental disorder) we show why a phenomenological approach to the study of these experiences is needed and how the distinction between the somatic and the mental comes under pressure when considering a complex phenomenon like breathlessness.