Each dimension of wellness can affect overall quality of life. Through its Wellness Initiative, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) encourages individuals, organizations, and communities to work toward longer, healthier, and happier lives, particularly among people living with behavioral health conditions. The Eight Dimensions of Wellness take into account not only an individual’s physical health, but all the factors that contribute to a person’s overall wellness.

With the pandemic no longer at crisis level where do we stand with respect to the struggles and the needs of physicians? Physician and peer coach Susan Wilson believes we are in recovery mode. In an illuminating article, she details statistics on the attitudes of nurses and physicians toward their jobs that are unexpectedly upbeat. Telehealth, which was massively mobilized during COVID, has proven itself a major aid to practitioners. At the same time, PTSD among them is a reality and so is short staffing and the resultant overwork. Other stressors that preceded the pandemic and made burnout a concern are with us as well. So is it a Great Recovery? Wilson isn’t certain, but she’s clear it’s looking positive. What is certain is there’s a “new normal” for workers in the healthcare industry and Wilson explores it, noting its upsides along with continuing problems. She puts this new normal in an illuminating new context: Post-Traumatic Growth, or PTG. This concept was born in the “positive psychology” movement which studies normalcy and happiness rather than mental and emotional dysfunction. PTG has been described as “a psychological transformation that follows a stressful encounter. It is a way of finding the purpose of pain and looking beyond the struggle.” Wilson provides a succinct introduction to the concept and how it might show healthcare leaders and physicians a way to turn the traumas of the past few years into growth and healing.

2022 saw a continuation of impacts from COVID-19. However, a shift occurred at organizational and systemic levels where awareness of mental health challenges and a desire to "do something" for those in need gained importance. Key Takeaways: 1. Balancing the Budget. Organizations continue to struggle with how to support and budget for resources to promote mental and behavioral health. 2. Tipping the Burnout Scale. Licensure concerns create barriers when seeking help for mental health and well-being support. 3. Legislative and National Spotlights. New state and national laws, such as the Dr. Lorna Breen Health Care Provider Protection Act, aim to reduce and prevent suicide, burnout and mental and behavioral health conditions among health care professionals.

The nephrocyte is the Drosophila melanogaster equivalent of a human podocyte. Use the nephrocyte to determine the relationship between nephrotic function, the actin and tubulin cytoskeletons, and their shared binding proteins. RNA-seq, functional readouts, and immunofluorescent stains were conducted to understand the roles of each gene. 14 shared binding proteins between the actin and tubulin cytoskeletons, with Pigs causing the most dramatic phenotype. This information can be used to aid further research into causes and solutions to renal diseases such as Nephrotic Syndrome.

This was an applied naturalistic study examining changes in work and clinical outcomes after using individual mental health coaching services from an employee assistance program in the United States. The data was from 872 employee users at CuraLinc Healthcare during the years 2020 to 2022. The coaching intervention included individual sessions that focused on helping the employee with personal goal setting, problem-solving and skill-building. Over two-thirds of clients engaged in coaching for support with mental health issues (anxiety 47%, depression 12% or other 9%) while others had issues of stress (19%), personal relationships (marital 8%, family 4%) or work (2%). The coaching was delivered online and usually lasted about five weeks. The study features a Pre to Post single-group research design with self-report data collected at the start of use and again at follow-up after the last session. Repeated measures ANOVA tests found significant improvement with each result being a large size statistical effect for the outcomes: work absenteeism hours were reduced by 88% (d=0.42); work productivity level was increased by 32% (d=0.79); severity of depression symptoms was reduced by 66% (d=0.67). Exploratory analyses indicated that improvement on outcomes was experienced consistently across different sub-groups of clients based on age, gender, employer and service use factors. Having an absence problem was reduced from 42% of all clients at Pre to 7% at Post. Specific hours of missed work in the past month (measured by the Workplace Outcome Suite) changed from 6.7 hours at Pre to less than 1 hour at Post. Employees with a problem with their work productivity (i.e., low performance and lack of focus, measured by Stanford Presenteeism Scale) was reduced from 27% of clients at Pre to 1% at Post. Among the subsample of clients initially with a work productivity problem, 94% achieved “reliable recovery” with a larger than chance level increase in their productivity score. The average total hours of absence and lost work productivity combined in the past month was reduced from 52.8 hours at Pre to 14.5 hours at Post. The percentage of all employees at-risk for clinical depression (measured by the PHQ-9) was reduced from 20% of coaching clients at Pre to zero at Post. Within this at-risk subgroup, 85% achieved “reliable recovery” such that the differences in their scores was greater than at chance level. Coaching services thus appear to be a viable alternative to counseling for employees interested in more goal-oriented, solution-focused type of support.