Studies on Distress and Being Well

Research programme ‘Studies on Distress and Being Well’ addresses experiencing and judging dimensions of life and health that are positive or negative, i.e., psychological wellbeings. The programme addresses current sociomedical issues that have been conducted in the past two decades by the research team at the Sociomedical Institute ZRC SAZU. These issues relate to the study of: the experience of illness and injury related to distress in different work environments; the design and implementation of psychoeducational programmes to strengthen mental health; the analysis of mental health services; the experience and treatment of distress in the adult population and, in particular, in some socially deprived groups (e.g., migrants) and the most at-risk occupational groups in terms of health (e.g., farmers and agricultural workers).

The study of psychological wellbeing is explicitly interdisciplinary, which is also an important feature of the programme’s research group which has been practicing and contrasting epistemologies, methodological approaches, and theories of psychology, medicine, sociology, and anthropology. In doing so, they face numerous challenges, from conceptualization and methodology to measurement. However, their initial stance is that there is not just one way to understand or track wellbeing, but there is a multiplicity of wellbeings, with preferred questions focusing on how people imagine, conceptualise, express, and experience their wellbeings in different social and cultural contexts.

The main objective of the programme is to combine the disciplinary diversity (epistemological and methodological) of the social sciences, humanities, and medicine in the field of distress and wellbeings of adult people. Distress and wellbeings of research participants are discussed within the framework of various theorisations of psychological wellbeings, considering biological as well as social, cultural, and environmental dimensions of distress related illnesses. Initially, the research team draws on concepts and constructs of mental health literacy and psychological wellbeings, social suffering, ordinary ethics, and the complex relationship between people’s agency and structural circumstances to better explain the impact of social, structural, cultural, and environmental changes on research participants’ distress and illness than is possible from existing health evidence alone.