Paradigm Shift: Why a Focus on Health Is Important

Traditionally, medicine and the social and behavioral sciences have studied health by focusing on pathology. The purpose of this issue of the Journal is to go beyond such a vulnerability model and focus on thriving. We suggest that thriving represents something more than a return to equilibrium following a challenge. This issue describes a "value-added" model, whereby an individual or community may go beyond survival and recovery from a stressor or illness to thrive. We suggest that this change of focus from illness to health represents a paradigm shift. This article gives an overview of the various ideas featured in this issue, which elaborate empirical and theoretical work on the concept of thriving. Ultimately, we believe that the scientific study of thriving can enhance our understanding of health and provide important opportunities for prevention and intervention.     

A Race, Class, and Gender Analysis of Thriving

Thriving research has been dominated by a psychological perspective. Individuals are typically the unit of analysis and thriving is generally operationalized using psychological measures. This article discusses a race, class, and gender perspective that derives from feminist sociology, as well as its implications for thriving research. This perspective, which focuses on the role of race, class, and gender inequality in organizing social relations, draws attention to the need to recognize that both the likelihood that someone will face a challenge and their ability to thrive in the face of that challenge are determined largely by their location in the social hierarchy. It also demonstrates that distinctions must be made between thriving in the face of the routine challenges of daily life and thriving in the face of challenges that are an extraordinary part of life. Finally, the race, class, and gender perspective has implications for the development of interventions to promote thriving. Each of these issues is elaborated further with illustrations drawn from life history and focus group interviews with and field work conducted among drug-addicted women.     

Qualitative Approaches to the Study of Thriving: What Can Be Learned?

Using the data from two ongoing studies of resilience and thriving, one of gay men growing up in heterosexist environments, the other of women living with AIDS, we review how qualitative approaches have enabled researchers to grapple with conceptual, methodological, and ethical dilemmas related to the study of resilience and thriving. We discuss the implications our values as researchers have on determining who is thriving; the powerful social, cultural, and political contexts that must be considered when investigating the effects of and resistance to adversity; and the implications of conceptualizing thriving as a process. Finally, we consider the opportunities opened up by qualitative analysis and suggest some avenues for future research.     

Embodying Psychological Thriving: Physical Thriving in Response to Stress

In addition to the context of psychological health, thriving can be measured in the context of physical health. Moreover, thriving may be operationalized at a macro level (e.g., improved functional health status following acute illness or injury) or at a micro level (e.g., hormonal balance). The goal of this article is to examine physical thriving at the micro level, by investigating hormonal responses to stressful situations. In addition, we examine the role that psychological factors play in this relationship. Although stress-induced arousal has traditionally been viewed as negative, certain endocrine responses to stress can be health enhancing. Specifically, we propose that physical thriving results when there is a greater amount of growth promoting or anabolic hormones (e.g., growth hormone) than catabolic hormones (e.g., cortisol). Characteristics of the stressor (duration, frequency, and controllability) as well as psychological moderators such as one's cognitive appraisal of the stressor (threat versus challenge) play a role in determining the profile of response to stress. When an individual appraises intermittent stressors as controllable, she or he may display a resilient profile of stress hormone responding—rapid cortisol responses with quick recovery, and more importantly, cortisol adaptation when faced with similar stressors over time. This stress response is in turn related to better health. To substantiate some of these issues, we present data from a study examining women's cortisol reactivity in response to a repeated laboratory stressor and their self-reported growth from facing trauma. The results suggest that women who have grown psychologically from trauma may show quicker cortisol habituation to other stressors. Cortisol adaptation to stress may serve as one potential marker of resilient psychological and physical functioning.     

Psychological Thriving Among Latinas With Chronic Illness

This study utilizes a 3-year longitudinal design to explore factors that promote thriving among Latinas facing multiple adversity: poverty and chronic illness (specifically, arthritis). From a thriving paradigm, focus is placed on understanding the positive growth and thriving experiences reported by respondents, as well as the social, cultural, and personal resources that promote thriving. In the baseline interview, we employed a qualitative methodology to understand women's experiences of thriving. Women reported a variety of such experiences, the most frequent being enhanced appreciation of life. In the follow-up study, we created a thriving scale based on responses generated at the initial interview and prior research, then examined which of a number of social/cultural and personal factors predicted thriving 3 years after the initial assessment. Only measures of competence (self-esteem and self-efficacy) and psychological well-being were related to thriving. Path analyses testing the causal sequence of these variables revealed that negative affect contributed to decreased self-efficacy and self-esteem, but it did not have a direct or indirect effect on thriving. Greater self-esteem positively predicted thriving. In contrast, positive affect did not contribute to either measure of competence, but had a direct effect on thriving. Results suggest that psychological well-being (not ill-being) promotes thriving.     

Nursing Home Social Services Directors Who Report Thriving at Work

Nationally representative data from a sample (n?=?928) of full-time nursing home social services directors were used to investigate whether knowing characteristics of the social environment at work can help to explain which directors report job thriving. Two-thirds of directors reported they were thriving in their jobs. Multiple regression results show that thriving is increased by job autonomy, being treated like an important part of the team, having enough time to identify and meet resident psychosocial needs, not having to do things that others could do, and being clear what the social services role is. Findings suggest that addressing these aspects of the social environment and social services role will likely contribute to increasing a sense of thriving at work among social services staff members.     

Beyond survival: Strengthening community-based support for parents receiving a family service intervention

This paper presents parents' experiences of community support and their recommendations for how their communities, and the services within them, might support their families. Generated through a human-centred design methodology and using a desire-centred framework, the findings suggest that parents receiving a family service require support invoking feelings of intimacy, trust, reciprocity, inclusivity, connection and belonging. Parents' recommendations for community support include addressing material and attitudinal constraints impacting on engagement with services; creating non-judgmental services tailored to their needs but accessed as a last resort; and creating peer-based opportunities to support each other. Parents reflect that moving beyond basic survival of risk and vulnerability to a position where thriving is possible requires purposeful integration of parent's existing and desired community into service interventions. Facilitating deliberate change at the intersection of community and service support is pertinent to current and future social work policy and practice. Wider opportunities for understanding and enabling the needs and aspirations of parents, which are often overlooked because of a focus on addressing risk and vulnerability, are considered.     

Social security reforms in China: issues and prospects

The phenomenal success of China's market-oriented economic reforms since the 1980s has rendered the traditional employment-based social security system increasingly inadequate and inefficient. For decades, the Chinese government has been trying to develop a more pluralistic, effective and affordable social security system which will be compatible with both a thriving market economy and a flagging socialist political structure. While the emerging system is still struggling with a variety of operational problems, the entry of China into the WTO is looming as a formidable challenge to this social security system. This presentation outlines the recent reforms of the social security system undertaken by the Chinese government, and assesses the effectiveness of the results in meeting the challenge. Here, social security reforms focus on the retirement and unemployment insurance schemes and the social assistance program.     

Quantitative Assessment of Thriving

We review methodological issues related to the quantitative assessment of thriving with interviews and paper-and-pencil scales. We emphasize two new paper-and-pencil measures of thriving, the Stress-Related Growth Scale (SRGS; Park, Cohen, & Murch, 1996) and the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 1996). These scales are designed to assess perceived benefits that result from a specific stressor. Research with the SRGS suggests a unidimensional structure of thriving, whereas research with the PTGI suggests a multidimensional structure. Two possible reasons for this inconsistent finding concern differences in the method of participant selection and in the recall period for the reporting of stressful events. In addition, we present a number of strategies to validate self-report measures of thriving, including corroboration from significant others and the use of control groups. We conclude with a brief discussion of the assessment of thriving at the group and community levels.     

Resilience and Thriving: Issues, Models, and Linkages

This article addresses distinctions underlying concepts of resilience and thriving and issues in conceptualizing thriving. Thriving (physical or psychological) may reflect decreased reactivity to subsequent stressors, faster recovery from subsequent stressors, or a consistently higher level of functioning. Psychological thriving may reflect gains in skill, knowledge, confidence, or a sense of security in personal relationships. Psychological thriving resembles other instances of growth. It probably does not depend on the occurrence of a discrete traumatic event or longer term trauma, though such events may elicit it. An important question is why some people thrive, whereas others are impaired, given the same event. A potential answer rests on the idea that differences in confidence and mastery are self-perpetuating and self-intensifying. This idea suggests a number of variables whose role in thriving is worth closer study, including personality variables such as optimism, contextual variables such as social support, and situational variables such as the coping reactions elicited by the adverse event.     

Armenia: A Country's History of Challenges

The example of a small nation of three-and-a-half million people is selected to conceptualize thriving in reference to the individual, the nuclear and extended family, the community, the state, the geopolitics of the land, the diaspora, and the cultural traditions. Armenia is selected not only because it is unique in the amount of adversity it has endured, but also because, as a very small nation, it has survived the challenges of centuries whereas other comparable civilizations have not. The article analyzes the cultural and geo-historical characteristics of Armenia, the development and role of a diaspora in the preservation of identity, and the contribution of parenting in the development of resilience and thriving. The article concludes that the strength of the family and child-rearing practices contributes to thriving of the individual and society. In addition, cultural factors, such as the arts, literature, sports, institutions, the church, intercultural networks, and the need to make up for the damages of genocide, earthquakes, and other adversities, contribute to the strength of the people. The article proposes that these characteristics of one society, albeit a small one, are suggestive of the universal human characteristics that contribute to thriving.     

Building a partnership for social service delivery in Indonesia: state and faith‐based organisations

Contrary to the secularisation processes in modernisation theory, religions and faith‐based organisations (FBOs) are thriving in contemporary Indonesia. Strongly supported by community members, religious organisations have begun to extend their services beyond the traditional areas of education and health to operate in disaster relief and poverty alleviation programmes. These FBOs have been offering assistance to the disadvantaged whose needs have not been adequately met by the state. Social programmes run by the FBOs are an important safety net at the grass‐roots level in Indonesia; how to effectively coordinate and offer such services are important social policy issues. This paper will show that the Indonesian Government is keen to remain the key provider of social services and often perceives the services of FBOs as a threat. Some recent state policies to regulate the funding sources of Islamic organisations have posed a significant logistical challenge for their future operation. In addition, theological differences across various religious groups have made it difficult to form inclusive and extensive partnerships among the FBOs, who tend to compete with each another resulting in rivalry. These socio‐political contexts have limited the formation of effective partnerships for offering coordinated social services.     

北部湾经济区建设中南宁宏观经济发展对策

面对不容乐观的国际经济形势，南宁对外经济战略布局需要调整。国内刺激经济举措颁布，南宁经济发展面临新机遇。南宁要在国内外特殊经济形式下，充分发挥北部湾核心城市的作用，起到领导经济发展的关键性作用，就要在短期内加大投资力度，确保经济的平稳增长；调整中长期外向型经济布局，做好进出口贸易，还要建立以消费为主的经济增长模式。     

A Personal Account

The author's personal experience with breast cancer is described and related to the theories and definitions of thriving as discussed in this issue.     

清代长沙民间组织之城市管理职能探析——以行会和慈善组织为例

清代的长沙，经济较为发达，人口繁多，这也就对城市管理提出了更高要求。但政府对城市的管理远远落后于城市的发展。在这种情况下，会馆公所、慈善组织等民间组织承担了许多城市管理的职能。清代长沙城市民间组织承担一定的城市管理之职能对今天城市管理创新有重要的借鉴作用。     

Migration and welfare

Migrants accout for an increasing proportion of unemployed people in Europe, and their economic position is deteriorating in many countries. Non-European refugees face the biggest risk of unemployment and welfare dependence. This, in turn, affects their health and wellbeing. Assessing and meeting the need for health care and social welfare for these vulnerable individuals is a challenge to health care, social services and to the public in host countries. Mainstream facilities should be the base, but transitional culturally sensitive programs may have many advantages as complements. Ethnically specific public services should not be regarded as a privilege for certain groups but as a measure to protect minorities from hidden discrimination. There is great complexity in migratory flows as well as in the responses of recipient countries. This generates opportunities for comparative research programs focusing on intercultural encounters and adaptation processes. Joint effort are essential to initiate collaborative research.     

Catch 22--Black Workers' Role in Equal Opportunities for Black Service Users

Correspondence to: Beverley Prevatt Goldstein, BECON, 4a Callerton Place, Newcastle, NE4 5NQ, UK. Summary This paper is based on the findings of a qualitative study ofblack social care workers (28) in white-led organizations, largelyin the north east of England. This study sought to assess theextent to which the practice of employing black workers to promoteequal opportunities for black service users led to additionalstress for black workers and to identify the contradictionsin this employment practice. It explored the expectations blackworkers held of themselves and perceived others to hold of themvis-à-vis the promotion of equal opportunities, the levelsof stress of black workers, and the black workers' perceptionsof their working conditions. This paper summarizes the findingsof the study, largely through the respondents own words, andanalyses how this approach to equal opportunities for blackservice users may contribute to negative working conditionsand high stress levels for black workers. It concludes thatin order to reduce the stress of black workers and provide abetter service for all, organizations need to move towards askills based rather than a ‘race’ based ethos andto constantly challenge the homogenization, interpersonal andinstitutional racism experienced by many black workers.     

从核心竞争力的视域看我国西部地区高校如何发挥地域特色

核心竞争力是伴随知识经济而产生的一个新的概念 ,是一种被某单位某地区独特拥有的、能为消费者带来特殊效用、能在某一市场上长期具有竞争优势、带来效益的内在能力资源。随着社会经济的快速发展 ,在我国已经加入WTO和西部大开发的新形势下 ,西部地区高校获得了快速发展的极好机遇 ,也面临着更加严峻的挑战和考验。从核心竞争力的视域看 ,我国西部地区高校应发挥西部地域特色 ,从而构建高校核心竞争力