The increasing participation of women in the labour market has highlighted significant advancements but also inequalities that negatively impact women’s happiness and job satisfaction. This study aims to analyse the existing literature on women’s workplace happiness through a bibliometric review, identifying trends, leading authors, research areas, and critical gaps. Employing a systematic bibliometric review methodology, 307 scientific articles published between 2010 and 2024 in the Web of Science Core Collection database were examined. Findings underscore a growing focus on factors external to the work environment, such as gender roles, double shifts, stress, and mental health. Furthermore, the results reveal considerable fragmentation in scientific production and a lack of established academic benchmarks. Conclusions stress the urgent need for organizational approaches that comprehensively address these inequalities, promoting policies of reconciliation, intersectional inclusion, and emotional well-being programmes. The study offers directions for future research and practical applications for fostering more equitable organizational management.

Previous research has shown that experiential knowledge plays an important role for service user movements and has also discussed ambiguities in the definition of this type of knowledge. This study contributes to clarifying how experiential knowledge is understood within the service user movement. Through semi-structured interviews, it explores how Swedish mental health service user organisations (MHSUOs) and service user entrepreneurs (SUEs) regard the role of experiential knowledge for their endeavours. The study shows that SUEs and MHSUOs view experiential knowledge as complementary to established medical and expert knowledge. Both groups further reflect on the functions of individual and collective dimensions of experiential knowledge. Emotions are important in conveying experiential knowledge, although emotional commitment can be short-lived. The study discusses challenges for SUEs and MHSUOs in developing strategies to manage risks tied to strategic essentialism, and also in maintaining a critical standpoint towards established service providers.

By applying the concept of participatory spaces, this article maps and analyzes current research on mental health service user organizations (MHSUOs). We have analyzed research literature from 2006 to 2016 to examine how the role of and challenges facing MHSUOs are formulated in the post-deinstitutional era. The current situation is marked by MHSUOs parallel presence in invited, claimed and popular spaces for participation. The post-deinstitutional era is characterized by a shift in focus from gaining access to such participatory spaces, to critically examining the political opportunities available in these. We further argue that the dominance of psychiatry-specific spaces could prevent MHSUOs from fully exploring their potential for participation in broader social issues.

Non-profit organizations (NPO) for mental health are becoming significant actors. Here, their roles in welfare society as understood in research are identified and analyzed. Results from recent research publications on the mental health field are synthesized and categorized in order to find out their origin, theoretical orientation, and view on mental health NPO’s in relation to the public welfare systems. Relevant publications are primarily from the US, empirically oriented, and addressing surveys on both individual and organizational level. NPOs were most often seen as consensus-oriented service organizations, while very few (4%) were seen as conflict-oriented advocates (i.e., anti-professional). It is concluded that these NPOs are most often studied as complements or alternatives to existing public welfare services rather than on their own terms, and that research on the topic lacks more complex theoretical attempts.

This article uses Liberia’s national mental health program to explore how stakeholders make meaning of their work and how those meanings intertwine with various powers to shape program outcomes. We use interview data to analyze how the Carter Center (an INGO), Liberian government, and local mental health practitioners understood the program to address this stigmatized, often-ignored health issue. INGO officials emphasized personal connections, virtuous actions, and expertise in meaning-making, ideas intertwined with network, moral, and epistemic powers. Liberian government officials understood the program to be government directed but financially unaffordable, illustrating the government’s institutional authority but low economic power. Mental health clinicians perceived the program as a virtuous opportunity to gain expertise and economic advancement, although they used the power to exit when these aspirations were unrealized. This article illustrates that meaning-making cannot be divorced from actors’ various powers and that stakeholders’ failure to align meanings can undermine program outcomes.

This paper explores the complex process of hybridisation of third-sector housing and support organisations (TSOs) in Northern Ireland. The focus of the study is the policy field of housing-related support services, known in the UK as ‘Supporting People’. This is a hybrid policy field involving several government departments, a number of market mechanisms and two types of third-sector actors. The exercise of organisational agency to adapt to competing drivers is illuminated through mental health and homelessness case studies. The paper explores how competing external influences from the Northern Ireland Assembly, horizontal policies for the third-sector and vertical service commissioning policies interact with TSOs’ own adaptation strategies involving the deployment of robust third-sector identities. Hybridisation is found to involve not only the dominance of state drivers and the promotion of market mechanisms in both fields, but also enactment of third-sector identities. Our analysis of hybridization in this case counters Billis’ (2010) representation of third-sector identity as weak, in flux, and subject to erosion by focusing on the agency of TSOs to strategically adapt to and negotiate external drivers and thereby achieve competitive advantage. Through the enactment of identity in this adaptation process, resources such as legitimacy, charitable income and volunteers are secured. This provides opportunities for policy makers to add value if they are prepared to emphasise horizontal over vertical policy goals.

Peer support approaches are gaining increasing importance within the mental health sector as an effective way to assist people with mental and addictive disorders. This article explores peer support volunteers’ motives for voluntary engagement in a model project in Germany. It aims to gain a deeper understanding of peer support approaches and their underlying motivations in an innovative context. Twenty-three qualitative interviews with peer support volunteers were analyzed according to Mayring’s qualitative content analysis. Results showed that voluntary engagement fulfills a heterogeneous range of functions for peer support volunteers. Alongside “typical” volunteers’ motives, there were peer-specific functions such as motivation due to own personal experiences and the objective of changing societal attitudes toward mental health. Furthermore, the context of employment promotion played a motivational role: Many interview partners aimed to transform counseling structures within the institutions they had experienced as clients themselves.

In many parts of the Western world, interventions for people with mental illness have radically changed in recent decades. In the deinstitutionalized system of today, the role for non-profit organizations is generally characterized by dual goals: political advocacy and service provision. Here, the role and function of the user movement in the Swedish mental health system is examined through a case study of all local branches of the largest non-profit organization within the Swedish mental health field. The empirical material consisted of annual reports from all local branches, and was analysed through two analytical schemes, concerning voice/service and conflict/consensus. The analysis pointed to a user movement that still retained the basic ideas of peer support and mutual aid, but were also increasingly being asked by formal service providers to represent the need of users. A hybrid organization category, a ‘Social Movement Peer Organization’, was identified that where social recreational activities are combined with local political advocacy.

As increasing numbers of students disclose mental health conditions, this study is the first to examine mental health status as a critical variable in foreign language anxiety research. Using a mixed-methods approach and drawing on data from 262 languages students at the Open University, it systematically compares foreign language speaking anxiety (FLSA) experiences between students with and without declared mental health conditions. Vocabulary retrieval emerged as the primary anxiety trigger common to all learners, however, significant distinctions emerged: students without mental health conditions expressed more academic-focused anxieties, whereas those with mental health conditions faced confidence and identity-based barriers. Students with mental health challenges are less likely to speak spontaneously and undertake spoken assessments, often opting to avoid online synchronous sessions entirely, requiring different coping strategies. The findings are analysed through a Universal Learning Design lens and reveal the need for tailored support and innovative pedagogical solutions, including AI-powered practice environments and self-compassion interventions specifically designed for online language learning contexts, to address the emotional barriers faced by students with mental health conditions. The study offers broader implications for inclusive (language) course design and learner engagement.

Individuals with mental health difficulties (MHD) have a substantial reduction in life expectancy compared to the general population. It is increasingly recognised that mental health services need to improve physical healthcare as a priority. Sexual health, including consideration of high-risk sexual behaviours, medication side effects, and challenges in romantic relationships, is a further important but under-recognised aspect of overall health. We discuss some of the current issues relating to physical and sexual health, with a particular focus on youth with MHD and how we might implement holistic care in Ireland. Prioritising the resourcing of these issues could facilitate the implementation of a Shared Model of Care as recommended in Ireland’s National Mental Health Policy, Sharing the Vision.

Mental health symptoms pose a significant vulnerability to stressful life events among currently married women, adversely impacting their overall well-being and quality of life. This study explores the spatial patterns and factors associated with anxiety, depressive symptoms and the co-occurrence of both symptoms among currently married women of reproductive age in Bangladesh. This study utilised data from 13,372 (weighted) currently married women aged 15–49 years in the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey (BDHS) 2022, which used a cross-sectional design. Multivariable logistic regression models determined the associated factors. Additionally, spatial distribution and hotspot analysis were conducted using ArcGIS version 10.8. The weighted prevalence of moderate to severe anxiety, depressive symptoms and co-occurrence of anxiety and depressive (CAD) symptoms among currently married women of reproductive age was 4.1% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.8%, 4.5%), 4.8% (95% CI: 4.7%, 5.4%) and 2.2% (95% CI: 2.1%, 2.6%), respectively. Clustering of anxiety symptoms (Moran’s I = 0.063, p < 0.001), depressive symptoms (I = 0.091, p < 0.001) and CAD symptoms (I = 0.082, p < 0.001) were observed, with hotspots in Rangpur, Sylhet and Chittagong regions. Logistics regression analysis shows that currently married women who were living in the Barishal, Khulna, Rangpur and Sylhet regions, who belong to households with a higher wealth index, who experienced high levels of intimate partner violence (IPV), have completed high school, who are sexually inactive and whose husbands are unemployed, were more likely to experience CAD symptoms. Additionally, currently married women of reproductive age, whose age was 25–34 years, who are labourers, whose pregnancies are terminated and who have ≥5 children ever born, are at a higher risk of having anxiety symptoms. Besides, currently married women aged 25–34 years and 35–44 years, who are underweight, were more likely to have depressive symptoms. The findings highlight a significant regional disparity in the burden of anxiety, depressive and CAD symptoms among currently married women of reproductive age in Bangladesh. These findings can help design site-specific programmes and actions for women in the hot spot areas of Rangpur, Sylhet and Chittagong.