The Connecting People and Community for Living Well initiative recognizes that communities, specifically multisector community teams, are a critical part of the provision of programs and supports for those affected by dementia. Effective collaboration and building and supporting the collective well-being of these multisector community teams is key to their success and sustainability. This research sought to understand what supports the well-being of community teams. Focus groups were conducted with multisector community teams who support those impacted by dementia from across four rural communities. The research team used thematic analysis to identify patterns emerging within and across focus groups. The findings highlighted three areas of importance: the need for a resource to support teams to measure, monitor, and describe the impact of their actions; ongoing support from a system-level team; and the development of local and/or provincial policy and infrastructure that supports sustaining collaborative community-based work.

In his widely anthologized article on the therapy-enhancement distinction, Resnik argues that, from a moral point of view, the claim that something is not health related cannot be a dispositive argument against the permissibility of enhancements. He further states how the permissibility of an intervention will depend on considerations like the intention for its use and the likely consequences that will ensue, and whether these violate any moral standards. Within this framework, in this paper I first argue that enhancements may be morally permissible on autonomy grounds (its political conception); and secondly, that this permissibility does not dissolve a moral distinction between therapies and enhancements, with the reason being that there is still a difference between something being generally permissible (i.e., therapies) and something being conditionally permissible (i.e., enhancements). But that is not all that is important for a moral therapy-enhancement distinction. I also argue that the distinction — apart from being about “permissibility” (at the level of regulation of individual use) — is also about regarding justice more broadly (at the level of what is owed to individuals). What captures the moral distinction more fully is that therapies are, generally speaking, not only morally permissible but also owed to persons (due to being enablers of social cooperation and competition), whereas, at this stage, enhancements can only be morally permissible. I demonstrate the appeal of this view by considering its stability and usefulness across specialized bioethical contexts and across various kinds of enhancements and show that its practical value for policy lies in its legitimizing / anticipatory and prioritizing functions.

The pandemic revealed significant gaps in mental health support for educators. This letter emphasizes the need for sustained mental health services, urging governments and institutions to provide resources, integrate mental health education into curricula, and create supportive work environments. Long-term strategies such as regular screenings and normalizing psychological support are essential for educators’ well-being.

A welfare subject is an entity with a good of its own. Welfare subjects have interests. Things matter to them. It is uncontroversial that typical adult humans are welfare subjects. It is uncontroversial that rocks are not welfare subjects. Just what makes this so is a matter of controversy. The default view is that sentience is necessary for welfare subjecthood. A competing view is that teleological organization suffices for welfare subjecthood. This article challenges both views by developing a third view that sits between them. An autopoietic entity is one that engages in self-production in a way that is adaptive to its environment. An autopoietic entity sustains, maintains, and renews itself on an ongoing basis. This article argues that all autopoietic entities are welfare subjects. This view explains why sentient entities such as animals are welfare subjects. It explains why merely teleologically organized entities such as automobile engines are not.

This review highlights the importance of dietary fibres (DF) intake and its interconnection with the gut microbiome and psychological well-being, while also exploring the effects of existing DF interventions on these aspects in adults. The gut microbiota is a complex and diverse ecosystem in which microbial species interact, influencing the human host. DF are heterogeneous, requiring different microbial species to degrade the complex DF structures. Emerging evidence suggests that microbial fermentation of DF produces short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), which may play a role in regulating psychological well-being by affecting neurotransmitter levels, including serotonin. The effectiveness of DF interventions depends on factors such as baseline gut microbiota composition, the dosage and the source of DF consumed. Although the gut microbiota of adults is relatively stable, studies have shown that the abundance of the species in the gut microbiota can change within 24 h of an intervention and may return to baseline following the termination of DF intervention. This review underscores the need for larger and well-powered dietary clinical trials incorporating longitudinal biological sample collections, advanced sequencing and omic techniques (including novel dietary biomarkers and microbial metabolites), validated subjective questionnaires and dietary records. Furthermore, mechanistic studies driven by clinical observations are crucial to understanding gut microbiota function and its underlying biological pathways, informing targeted dietary interventions.

The resonance constraint holds that something can benefit someone only if it bears a connection to her favoring attitudes. It is widely taken as a decisive reason to reject objective views of well-being since they do not guarantee such a connection. I aim to show that this is a mistake and that felt-quality hedonism about well-being can in fact meet the constraint. First, I argue that the typical way of putting the constraint is misguided in its demandingness. I then introduce alternatives and argue that the most plausible among them are compatible with felt-quality hedonism. I proceed to show that the same considerations which animate traditional resonance concerns motivate another kind of resonance which the hedonist is well-positioned to accommodate. One upshot is that the constraint does not provide us with a reason to favor subjective views of well-being, as they are traditionally formulated, over objective ones.

The perinatal period is an important time for infant and parent. Vulnerable parents with pre-existing challenges, such as adverse experiences in their own childhood, might find the transition to parenthood particularly hard. The Cochrane Review considered here sought to assess the effectiveness of parenting interventions provided to parents with symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder and/or a history of childhood maltreatment, with the aim of improving the parents’ well-being or parenting capacity. In this commentary we focus on how the limited evidence base, along with some key aspects of the review’s methodology, might have influenced its finding that such interventions showed little or no benefit.

This systematic review aims to evaluate the effectiveness of various physical environmental enrichment items such as brushes, ropes, teats, chains, balls, cowhides/blocks, at improving the welfare of indoor-housed calves, heifers, and cattle. This review of 33 peer-reviewed papers and one industry report evaluated different welfare-related outcomes following physical environmental enrichment, including feed intake, lying time, play and exploratory behaviour, aggression, stereotypic behaviour and cross-sucking behaviour. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that calves and heifers enrolled in experimental studies using enrichment items had significantly improved growth rates, and increased locomotor play, but the overall reduction in cross-sucking behaviour was small and non-significant. The effect of enrichment on feed intake, aggression/stereotypic behaviour, play behaviour, cleanliness score contrasted between studies, with some reporting improvements while others showed no effect of environmental enrichment in these parameters. The risk of bias assessment revealed limitations in researcher blinding, sequence generation, and allocation concealment across the literature assessing the effectiveness of environmental enrichment on animal welfare. Overall, this review underscores the significant positive impact of physical enrichment on the welfare and behaviour of indoor-housed cattle, while highlighting the need for further research to optimise enrichment strategies across different cattle age groups and housing conditions.

Despite societal shifts in attitudes towards gender and sexuality, LGBTQ+ individuals continue to experience multiple forms of labour-market disadvantage – including greater unemployment, lower job satisfaction, and slower career progression. However, existing scholarship has paid little attention to the comparative employment conditions of LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ individuals. Leveraging unique data from a large, Australian, employer-employee dataset (2024 AWEI Employee Survey), we fill this knowledge gap by examining the relationships between LGBTQ+ status, non-standard employment (NSE), and workplace well-being. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, we provide novel empirical evidence of the ‘double whammy’ faced by LGBTQ+ employees in relation to NSE. On the one hand, LGBTQ+ employees are more likely to be in certain forms of NSE than non-LGBTQ+ employees; on the other, their workplace well-being is more negatively impacted by these employment arrangements. These findings bear important lessons for policy and practice, indicating that closing the gap between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ workers requires careful consideration of their employment arrangements and the circumstances that surround them.

This article advocates for the expansion of research into the topic of well-being in language education. It begins by outlining key definitional concerns and then moves to outline general issues and gaps in the current body of research such as a need for a diversification in research in social contexts, working conditions, languages, cultures, as well as a clarification of the domain specificity of the construct. In the main body of the paper, three core specific areas are outlined in detail with suggestions of not only what could be researched but how this could be done in concrete empirical terms. Task 1 concerns the dynamism of well-being across different timescales and how those interact. Task 2 focuses on the relationship between self-efficacy and well-being as an example of one core individual difference that could impact well-being development. Task 3 reflects on the possible interplay between learner and teacher well-being. The article ends by arguing for language teacher well-being to receive the urgent and critical attention that it deserves across the whole range of contexts and individuals who identify as language educators.

Paradigm cases of disappointment occur when we fail to attain the object of our desire, or when doing so frustrates some of our other desires. However, some non-standard cases seem not to fit this pattern. We occasionally find ourselves disappointed despite perceiving that our desire has been fulfilled. Experiences of this sort are sometimes called ‘Dead Sea apples’. Such cases threaten the viability of theories that claim that fulfilling our desires always makes our lives go better for us. This paper considers what reflection on the nature of Dead Sea apples can teach us about the structure of desire and its relationship to well-being. I argue that this type of disappointment often occurs when we have a frustrated conjunctive desire that contains some satisfied conjuncts. The fact that the desire contains some satisfied conjuncts explains why we are prone to misidentifying it as fulfilled.