Ecosystems and human well-being

■ Human well-being has several key components: the basic material needs for a good life, freedom and choice, health, good social relations, and personal security. Well-being exists on a continuum with poverty, which has been defined as"pronounced deprivation in well-being."
■ How well-being and ill-being, or poverty, are expressed and experienced is context- and situation-dependent, reflecting local social and personal factors such as geography, ecology, age, gender,and culture.These concepts are complex and value-laden.
■ Ecosystems are essential for human well-being through their provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services. Evidence in recent decades of escalating human impacts. on ecological systems worldwide raises concerns about the consequences of ecosystem changes for human well-being.
■ Human well-being can be enhanced through sustainable human interaction with ecosystems with the support of appropriate instruments, institutions, organizations, and technology. creation of these through participation and transparency may contribute to people's freedoms and choices and to increased economic, social,and ecological security.
■ Some believe that the problems from the depletion and degradation of ecological capital can be largely overcome by the substitution of physical and human capital. Others believe that there are more significant limits to such substitutions.The scope for substitutions varies by socioeconomic status.
■ We identify direct and indirect pathways between ecosystem change and human well-being,whether it be positive or negative.lndirect effects are characterized by more complex webs of causation, involving social, economic, and political threads. Threshold points exist beyond which rapid changes to human well-being can occur.
■ Indigent poorly resourced, and otherwise disadvantaged communities are generally the most vulnerable to adverse ecosystem change. Spirals, both positive and negative, can occur for any population, but the poor are more vulnerable.      
■ Functioning institutions are vital to enable equitable access to ecosystem services. lnstitutions sometimes fail or remain undeveloped because of powerful individuals or groups. Bodies that mediate the distribution of goods and services may also be appropriated for the benefit of powerful minorities.
■ For poor people, the greatest gains in well-being will occur through more equitable and secure access to ecosystem services. In the long run, the rich can contribute greatly to human well-being by reducing their substantial impacts on ecosystems and by facilitating greater access to ecosystem services by the poor.
■ We argue ecological security warrants recognition as a sixth freedom of equal weight with participative freedom, economic   facilities, social opportunities, transparency guarantees, and protective security.

'Girls talking about girls' issues' : the importance of girls-only health and physical education in promoting well-being

Recognition of the important role schools play in the promotion of student well-being can be seen in the growing number of policies and programs being implemented in schools across Australia. This paper reports on some initial data from focus group interviews with Year 9 and 10 girls involved in the pilot of a health and physical activity intervention designed to connect them to their local community and reconnect them with their school and their peers. The aim of the program was to build connectedness and resilience by engaging young women in non-traditional physical activities whilst providing them with a sound understanding of health issues relevant to adolescent girls. Situated in a relatively isolated rural community 200 kilometres south-east of Melbourne the program was overwhelmingly delivered by regional and local agencies in conjunction with the local secondary school. The intervention was built on a partnerships model designed with the purpose of increasing participation and access for young women whilst building a sustainable program run in partnership between the school and local agencies and services. The initial data from this pilot indicates the program is having a positive impact on the young women's sense of self and their bodies, their relationships with their peers and in reducing bullying behaviour amongst the girls. However, the data raises some important questions around the adequacy of school-based health education, and the sustainability of approaches designed to be delivered by outside agencies rather than classroom teachers.

The influence of job, team and organizational level resources on employee well-being, engagement, commitment and extra-role performance : test of a model

Purpose – Worker well-being continues to be fundamental to the study of work and a primary consideration for how organizations can achieve competitive advantage and sustainable and ethical work practices (Cartwright and Holmes; Harter, Schmidt and Keyes; Wright and Cropanzano). The science and practice of employee engagement, a key indicator of employee well-being, continues to evolve with ongoing incremental refinements to existing models and measures. This study aims to elaborate the Job Demands-Resources model of work engagement (Bakker and Demerouti) by examining how organizational, team and job level factors interrelate to influence engagement and well-being and downstream outcome variables such as affective commitment and extra-role behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach – Structural equations modelling of survey data obtained from 3,437 employees of a large multi-national mining company was used to test the important direct and indirect influence of organizational focused resources (a culture of fairness and support), team focused resources (team climate) and job level resources (career development, autonomy, supervisor support, and role clarity) on employee well-being, engagement, extra-role behaviour and organizational commitment.

Findings – The fit of the proposed measurement and structural models met criterion levels and the structural model accounted for sizable proportions of the variance in engagement/wellbeing (66 percent), extra-role-behaviour (52 percent) and commitment (69 percent).

Research limitations/implications – Study limitations (e.g. cross-sectional research design) and future opportunities are outlined.

Originality/value – The study demonstrates important extensions to the Job Demands-Resources model and provides researchers and practitioners with a simple but powerful motivational framework, a suite of measures, and a map of their inter-relationships which can be used to help understand, develop and manage employee well-being and engagement and their outcomes.

The subjective well-being of people caring for a family member with a severe disability at home: a review

This review concerns the life quality of people caring for a relative with a severe disability within their family. It involves the balance between the advantages such care brings to the care recipient and the costs borne by the family. A brief history indicates that the forces that encourage family care are minimally concerned with family welfare. Moreover, an analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data indicates that primary caregivers are at considerable risk of high stress, clinical depression, and abnormally low subjective quality of life. It is concluded that increased public expenditure directed to the care of people with severe disability is urgently required.

The impact of sexual esteem, body esteem, and sexual satisfaction on psychological well-being in people with physical disability

The current study investigated the association between sexuality and psychological well-being in people with physical disabilities. A total of 1,196 participants completed the study. There were 748 participants who had a physical disability and 448 participants who were able-bodied. The results demonstrated that sexual esteem, body esteem, and sexual satisfaction were strong predictors of self-esteem and depression among people with physical disability, and that this relationship was stronger among people with physical disability than able-bodied participants. It was also found that body esteem was more closely associated with self-esteem in disabled women, while sexual esteem was more closely associated with self-esteem in disabled men. The results of the study suggest that researchers and clinicians who are concerned with the psychological health of people with physical disability should consider strategies to improve the body esteem and sexual well-being of people with physical disabilities.

Playing their part: the role of physical activity and sport in sustaining the health and well being of small rural communities

It is widely recognised that the health of rural Australians is poor in comparison with their urban counterparts. Similarly, the role played by physical activity in maintaining health has been well researched and is well documented. However, little appears to have been published in recent years about the links between physical activity and health in rural communities. The objective of this article was to begin to address that gap. To achieve this, the article drew on research conducted in two small rural communities in Victoria Australia, and highlighted the role that physical activity and sport played in sustaining the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities in rural areas. Taking the World Health Organisation's definition of health (a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease) as its measure, the paper highlighted the many ways in which physical activity and sport in rural communities contribute to physical health, mental wellbeing and social cohesiveness. Based this finding, the authors suggest that physical activity and sport make a significant contribution to the health and wellbeing of rural people and their communities and suggest that further research is necessary to better define this apparent contribution.

Governing the Stressed Self: teacher "health and well-being" and "effective schools"

In diverse arenas there is much discussion about the dangerousness of contemporary lifestyles, including the stressful nature of work. These stresses associated with contemporary lifestyles and work are dangerous in so far as they are conceived as placing at risk the emotional, physical and psychic health and well-being of large populations. In this paper we engage with debates about the stressful nature of teachers' work, and the ways in which teacher health and well-being are constructed as being central to the task of delivering more effective schools. In this article we are not so much concerned with the nature of teacher stress as an indication of individual physical, emotional or psychic health and well-being, as with understanding how it is that at this particular historical juncture the self can be so widely conceived in terms of stress. Moreover, what processes make it possible at this moment to link the success or otherwise of a massive institutional process of state-regulated schooling to the health and well-being of teachers and the management of this health and well-being by school managers? We argue that in a policy context that devolves various responsibilities to self-managing schools, the government of the stressed self emerges as an ethical concern for teachers and those who manage them (Foucault, The Use of Pleasure , New York, Pantheon, 1985). Our purpose is to problematise these processes so that responsibilities for delivering on the promise of effective schools might be differently framed and debated.

Multiple sclerosis and economic well being: role of health, age, and duration of illness

This study used quantitative and qualitative techniques to examine the role of health, age, and duration of illness among people with multiple sclerosis (MS) in their economic well-being. Participants were 113 adults (31 males and 82 females) with MS who lived in urban and rural regions of Australia. The results demonstrated that health and age had a significant impact on both the economic well-being and psychological adjustment of people who contract this disorder. Different health variables predicted different aspects of economic well-being. Fatigue was the major health variable that predicted costs of MS and economic pressure, with age also predicting economic pressure, whereas income levels were predicted by cognitive confusion and mobility problems. Duration of illness, gender, and urban/rural location were not significant predictors of the economic variables. These results demonstrate the importance of obtaining multiple measures of economic well-being, as well as a broad range of health-related measures, in determining the impact of MS on the economic well-being of people with this disorder.