In recent years, mindfulness has become popularised due to its perceived effectiveness in different areas of life. Most of the recent literature in regards to mindfulness however, has been after training programmes to cultivate it as a skill, while assessment of its effectiveness in different life domains has been completed using quantitative measures. The purpose of this research was to approach the area of mindfulness from a humanistic stance, and to not teach or do anything to the person but rather research the person for whom they already are, focusing on a dispositional personal strength; mindfulness. Professionals working within oncology were chosen as a population, because even though the experiences of cancer sufferers has been extensively researched, the experience of their carers has been somewhat neglected. I wanted to listen to their perceived well-being, based on their own constructs and experiences, in relation to different perspectives of self-reported mindfulness. Self reported levels of mindfulness were assessed in staff working within a private cancer hospital using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale. Maximum variation sampling was used to obtain both the higher and lower perspective levels of mindfulness. Due to a relatively low response rate, six individuals were asked to attend an interview - the three highest and three lowest scorers. Using a semi-structured interview in a qualitative methodology, questions were asked to generate experiences of well-being from individuals. Five themes were found after analysing the corpus of data using Thematic Analysis. The main themes that were identified in relation to well-being at work were; 'individual impact of working within oncology', 'patient relationships', 'staff relationships', 'transition from home to work', and 'environmental responses'. In presenting these themes it emerged that there were a wide range of views in regards to well-being. Different participants reported both positive and negative affects at work, particularly in relation to the impact of the deterioration of patients. Potentially, those participants who reported higher levels of perceived mindfulness experienced well-being more positively. Potentially, stronger relationships with both patients and colleagues were also had by those same participants, who interestingly, were less affected by work in their home life. They also potentially showed more resilience at work in being able to cope more effectively within the busy environment that was described. However, all participants described job enjoyment. Conclusions were drawn: Relationships are important with both patients and members of staff. A healthy work-life balance is also important. Mindfulness may aid the experience of well-being when working within oncology. Implications were presented in relation to mindfulness, Oncology and Counselling Psychology, with the potential for this research showing the effectiveness of mindfulness in its un-fabricated form in a naturalistic setting.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the well-being of patients in clinical neuroscience settings. Both the systematic review and research paper are being prepared for submission to the journal of Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, the guidelines of which are included in the appendices (Appendix 1).Paper one is a systematic review of the literature investigating the prevalence of depression following traumatic brain injury (TBI). 26 papers were reviewed with 15 meeting quality assessment criteria and were described in further detail. The prevalence of depression following TBI, reported in the reviewed studies, varied between 19% and 46%.The quality of the methodology of the studies is evaluated and discussed.The research paper (paper two) investigated the relationship between well-being, cognitive impairment and dependency using care mapping - neurorehabilitation (DCM-NR) as a measure of well-being. This study applied DCM-NR in a range of clinical neuroscience settings. Participants considered to have severe cognitive impairment were found to have significantly lower well-being (as measured by DCM-NR), and to be more dependent than participants with moderate, mild or no cognitive impairment. Overall level of dependency and cognitive impairment accounted for 23.9% of the variance in well-being scores from the DCM-NR.Paper three is a critical appraisal of the systematic review and research paper. Pertinent issues, including methodological limitations, relevant to the two papers are discussed in addition to clinical and research considerations.

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abstract: According to hedonism about happiness, all and only enjoyable experiences are the basic constituents of one’s happiness, and these experiences contribute to one’s happiness just to the extent that they have a greater intensity or duration. After defending this view, I show that it must be amended to count as an equally plausible theory of what constitutes one’s well-being. I then present two such amended versions of hedonism about well-being. The first, which I call objective hedonism, adds the claim that the objective worth of the things one enjoys also makes a difference to the extent to which an enjoyable experience contributes to one’s well-being. The second, which I call reliabilist hedonism, adds the claim that one’s evaluative intuitions about which things are good for one track which things have proven themselves to one to reliably lead to enjoyable experience. I conclude that reliabilist hedonism constitutes a revival of hedonism about well-being. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Philosophy 2020

The purpose of this study was to assess overall life satisfaction of older adult women who have not had children. The study explored the following questions: (1) What is the overall sense of life satisfaction of childfree women over 65? (2) What is the lived experience of being a childfree woman in U.S. society? (3) How does being childfree inform women’s overall life satisfaction? This study utilized a phenomenological research design. Fourteen childfree women over the age of 65 participated in semistructured interviews aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the sense of life satisfaction of childfree women in late life. The study’s purpose was to look at the lived experiences of childfree older women and further understand their abilities to live fulfilled lives despite the absence of child bearing. This research explored the experiences of women without children and hopefully will inspire future research on the topic as well as inform practice regarding the unique experiences and perspectives of childfree women. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2020. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

abstract: The present study aimed to advance the current understanding of the relation between disability and subjective well-being by examining the extent to which different facets of subjective well-being (life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect) change before and after disability onset, and the extent to which age and type of disability moderate such changes. Multiphase growth-curve models to prospective longitudinal survey data from Waves 1-16 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey (N = 3,795; mean age = 50.22; age range: 16-99; 51% women). On average, life satisfaction remained relatively stable across the disability transition, whereas positive affect declined and negative affect increased the year surrounding disability onset; in the years thereafter, neither positive affect nor negative affect returned to pre-onset levels. Individuals who acquired disability in old age were more likely to report sustained declines in subjective well-being than were individuals who became disabled in midlife or young adulthood. Psychological disability was associated with the strongest declines across each indicator of subjective well-being at disability onset but also greater adaptation in the years thereafter. The findings provide further evidence against the set-point theory of hedonic adaptation and for a more moderate viewpoint that allows for processes of adaptation to vary based on the outcome examined, the type of stressor, and individual characteristics. The discussion focuses on possible mechanisms underlying the moderating roles of age and type of disability. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2019

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The journey of self-discovery is unique to human beings, and quests to resolve any existing problem entails taking steps leading to solutions, even if one may not have a guarantee that the steps would automatically bring a solution, acting instead based on hope. The perceived incompleteness of the hand-down of Christianity to Africa from the West when it comes to the daily realities led some early African converts to discover that the Bible presented a holistic worldview that addressed their challenges better. The emergence of African indigenous/ initiated/ independent churches (AICs) to fill the gap in preaching the gospel with cultural sensitivity and integration was the consequence of the lapses of the mainline churches.

Thesis advisor: Margaret Lombe / Thesis advisor: Oscar Alfonso Martínez Martínez / The influence of cultural participation (in this study, attendance, engagement, and consumption in cultural and artistic activities) on the subjective well-being of victims of crime has not been thoroughly studied. Considering the increasing incidence of crime in Mexico, for policymakers and practitioners, it is necessary to understand the strategies and adaptations that persons utilize in response to crime victimization and the effects of this on their subjective well-being. With data from the 2012 Self-reported Well-Being Survey (BIARE, n=10,654) and through a generalized structural equation modeling analysis, the main purpose of the dissertation is to understand whether cultural participation can moderate or mediate the effects of victimization on individuals’ subjective well-being. Results from the study show an overall positive influence of the cultural participation activities on the subjective well-being of victims of community and structural violence (but not of domestic violence), because, for those who reported higher levels of cultural participation, the probability of better subjective well-being was higher. This has implications for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners in the improvement of the general quality of life of crime victims / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

The overarching objective of the thesis was to better understand how second generation (G2) East and Southeast Asian emerging adult immigrants make sense of their bicultural identity integration (BII), and in turn experience well-being. Moreover, a domain-specific approach was adopted with the premise that an individual could experience a great deal of well-being in one context (e.g., at home) while encountering significant difficulties in adjustment in another (e.g., in the public sphere). To achieve this, two studies were completed as part of the thesis. In the first study, we focused on family domain adjustment and well-being. In particular, we were interested how parental autonomy support (proxy for individualism) and family allocentrism (proxy for collectivism) were related to participants’ parent-child relationship satisfaction, parent-child relationship conflict, and family-domain subjective well-being. We were also interested in how BII may explain the above relationships through mediation pathways. In the second study, the focus shifted towards community-domain adjustment. Research questions were formulated around the relationships between cultural socialization (independent variable [IV] 1), experiences with microaggressions (IV 2), and sense of belonging to heritage cultural community (dependent variable [DV] 1) and mainstream Canadian community (DV 2). Again, BII was included in the model to determine its ability to explain the above pathways. The results from study 1 revealed that parental autonomy support was positively related to family domain-specific well-being for all participants. Family allocentrism was linked with parent-child relationship satisfaction, but only for participants who had moved away from parents. BII appeared to partially explain the relationship between family allocentrism and parent-child conflict. The results from study 2 revealed that co-ethnic peer cultural socialization towards East and Southeast Asian culture had a positive relationship with participants’ sense of belonging to their heritage community. Meanwhile, parental and Euro-Canadian peer cultural socialization towards Canadian culture had positive relationships with participants’ sense of belonging to the dominant Canadian community. Not surprisingly, microaggressions were negatively linked with participants’ sense of belonging to heritage and Canadian communities. The results from the mediation model again suggested that BII was able to partially explain the link between microaggressions and sense of belonging to heritage and dominant communities. Moreover, BII also appeared to be able to explain some of the relationships between cultural socialization and participants’ sense of belonging. Taken together, the findings from the two studies shed light on how BII may subtly influence well-being differently across the home and community spheres, reinforcing the need to look at BII from a situated approach. Implications for clinicians on how to best support G2 East and Southeast Asian emerging adult immigrants navigating their bicultural identity and experience well-being are discussed.

This study examines differences in well-being between sexual minority and heterosexual college students and identifies factors associated with well-being among sexual minority college students. A secondary analysis of cross-sectional web-based survey data was conducted. Using propensity score matching, 43 sexual minority students were matched to 43 heterosexual students on age, race, sex, and year in school. Sexual minorities had significantly lower well-being scores compared to heterosexual college students. Among sexual minorities, physical activity, depression, thoughts of suicide, and sleep quality were all predictive of well-being. Understanding issues related to well-being among sexual minorities is important and strategies need to be developed to improve well-being.