Wellbeing Explained

This Matthew Iasiello and Episode 37 of Researching Happy, a podcast focused on the latest science on mental health and wellbeing, DIRECT from the researcher who product it. 

I’m trying something different where every episode will focus on one research paper, this will help keep me a bit on track, but also help you decide which episodes will be most interesting to you. 

I’ve also launched the Journal Club, which is a mailing list for the show, where I’ll keep you up to date on upcoming Guests and give you the opportunity to ask your own questions. Sign up at researchinghappy.com. and thanks to the 50 or so who have already signed up! 

Today’s episode is with Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. He completed his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and then taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City before returning to Australia. Nick's research interests are in social, personality, and clinical psychology and he has published 11 books and more than 300 articles or book chapters in these and related areas.

We focus on Nick’s paper titled:

Ill-defined: Concepts of mental health and illness are becoming broader, looser, and more benign

We work through the notion of ‘Concept Creep’ and the INFLATION OF MENTAL HEALTH LANGUAGE, the expansive idea of what mental health is, blurred boundaries between mental health and wellbeing, and the problems associated such as growing trends of self-diagnosis which may ultimately be hurting more than helping. 

The importance of conceptual clarity is something that we’ve covered across lots of episodes, and this conversation was joy to have.  Thank you again to Professor Haslam, and enjoy the episode! 

Considering joining the Journal Club, and give the show a rating wherever you find it! 

Show notes:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560324000318?via%3Dihub

https://theconversation.com/do-you-have-a-mental-illness-why-some-people-answer-yes-even-if-they-havent-been-diagnosed-231687

https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/mental-health-wellbeing

Join the JOURNAL CLUB www.researchinghappy.com

Prof Tony Jorm is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne and NHMRC Leadership Fellow. His research focuses on building the community’s capacity for prevention and early intervention with mental disorders.

Prof Jorm is the author of 37 books or monographs, over 700 journal articles and over 40 chapters in edited volumes. He has been awarded a Doctor of Science for his research and elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. He is Editor-in-Chief of Mental Health & Prevention. Previous positions he has held include NHMRC Australia Fellow, Chair of the Research Committee of Australian Rotary Health, President of the Australasian Society for Psychiatric Research and Editor-in-Chief of the Australasian Journal on Ageing. He has been listed in ISI HighlyCited.com as one of the most cited researchers in Psychology/Psychiatry and received a Thomson Scientific Citation Award.

Join the JOURNAL CLUB at www.researchinghappy.com/home

Dr Mohsen Joshanloo is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Keimyung University, South Korea. He is a personality psychologist and cross-cultural psychologist, and has dedicated his career to understanding mental well-being and the role of culture in shaping it.

We work through Mohsen’s longitudinal research, and the powerful implications of using within-person, longitudinal research methods. It gets slightly technical, but Mohsen walks us through some examples where his work has shown some surprising results, in part from using uncommon research methods which can deal with some of the variability between people - something that is often overlooked (particularly in cross-sectional work).

Mohsen has a great sense of humour, and (since we spoke) has just published a study debunking any link between zodiac signs and wellbeing. Follow Mohsen’s work at: https://mohsenjoshanloo.weebly.com/

Matt sits down with James Lathe, who is an exciting prospect for the future of mental health economics. This conversation is mostly Matt getting overexcited, with James tempering expectations.

We walk through James' first PhD paper, published in Lancet Psychiatry available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2215036623004364

James' work is the answer to a lot of people's questions so share this widely!

Learn more from an expert of economics and wellbeing, Professor Arthur Grimes.

Find more information on Arthur's work here: https://www.motu.nz/about-us/people/arthur-grimes/

And a copy of his paper on Freedom of Speech and Wellbeing: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268123002007?ssrnid=4098909&dgcid=SSRN_redirect_SD

https://phaa.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsitePortal/preventive-mental-health-symposium/website

Welcome to Episode 30 of Researching Happy.

This week we chat with Associate Professor Aaron Jarden of the University of Melbourne Centre for Wellbeing Science. Aaron is a great friend of the show and we have a fantastic wide-ranging conversation.

We talk about the International Journal of Wellbeing, an exciting, multi-disciplinary open-access journal that Aaron co-developed, the ethics of positive psychology practice, the role of philosophy in guiding strong academic work, and Aaron's interesting work on lay perspectives of wellbeing.

Some links:

The IJW: https://www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org/index.php/ijow

Preventive Mental Health Symposium (March 12 Melbourne) https://phaa.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsitePortal/preventive-mental-health-symposium/website

Welcome to Researching Happy

This week we sit down with Dr Suzy Green, CEO and Founder of the Positivity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology Sydney. Suzy shares her valuable experience, talking about the early days of Coaching, the differences she experiences as a clinical psychologist vs being a coach, and working with a founder of coaching research Tony Grant.

Find out more about Suzy's work at: https://thepositivityinstitute.com.au/

And check out the Beyond Blue What Works for Mental Wellbeing Guide here: https://www.beyondblue.org.au/docs/default-source/resources/bb-guide-to-what-works-for-mental-wellbeing-final.pdf?sfvrsn=5ca0e3c_2

Welcome to Researching Happy with Dr Matthew Iasiello

This is the weekly podcast, sharing the stories behind the studies of the wellbeing research world. 

Welcome to Episode 28. This week we host Professor Jennifer Frey onto the podcast, who is the recently appointed Dean of Honors College at the University of Tulsa. Listen I get up pretty early for some of these conversations, and this week it was early enough for me to forget that we even have Deans at Australian Universities… which is sad when you think one of my closest mentors in research was himself, a Dean. 

Anyway, as you’ve heard on the show, we want to expand this conversation beyond psychology, and hear how other disciplines understand Happiness. Theology and philosophy are two areas that I really want to learn more about, and I know that Thomas Aquinas is someone who famously crosses these two worlds. Thomas Aquinas is a Saint in the Catholic Church, and to be honest, when I started looking to see if anyone was writing about Aquinas and Happiness, I was expending some professor sitting in a dusty office somewhere who would be happy that someone who was just happy to be contacted. That’s when I came across Dean Frey’s work, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. She is by far the most popular guest I’ve had on the show, a mother of 6 children, and the host of her own podcast, Sacred and Profane Love, which I highly recommend for anyone interested in lessons in virtue from literary art. 

I learnt so much from this conversation, and I expect you will too. We cover a lot of ground between Aristotle to Aquinas, and I think there is a lot for the positive psychology world to learn than the simplistic hedonistic/eudaimonic distinction that everyone cites.   

Enjoy this episode, share it with someone who will love it, and stay in touch with us on social media and Ppotify!