Good health requires collective effort

We are living in a time when change is happening at an incredible rate. Artificial intelligence is growing at a rapid pace, climate change is shifting the way we live—including mass evacuations and property damage—social cohesion is declining, a worldwide pandemic continues, and with many wars taking place, our worldwide political landscape is fragile.  

It's natural for people to perceive and experience change events as threats, experiencing increased stress and declines in well-being. However, there are times when change events can be treated as challenges and problems to solve. When change events cause stress, resilience develops when people are able to “maintain adaptive functioning in response to the ongoing stress of daily living.”  

Remaining resilient in the face of ongoing change is a persistent challenge. Being healthy and well helps people develop and display resilience, so our society is placing a heightened focus on the well-being of youth in school and the well-being of adults at work. Of seven key priorities identified by the U.S. surgeon general for 2024, four focus on workplace well-being, social cohesion, youth mental health and burnout in health care workers. These same priorities are also reflected in Canada’s quality of life measures report from 2021.

Well-being, particularly physical and mental well-being, is often presented and considered to be the responsibility of individuals. We have the most agency with respect to our own physical and mental well-being. As a result, we are bombarded with advertisements for healthy lifestyles and physical fitness activities.  

However, there is increasing recognition in academic and research circles that placing the sole responsibility for wellness on the shoulders of individuals is unfair because it is also a collective responsibility. In other words, we all have an obligation for each other’s well-being, and collective supports for wellness are increasingly being recognized as key components for individuals to be healthy.

When considered through examples, this makes complete sense. If the workload of a health-care worker is so heavy that it creates stressors that continue without relief, inevitably that the worker will experience poor health and possibly burnout. Were organizations to provide support through reasonable demands on workers, opportunities for career growth, sick leave and psychological benefits, not only would individual workers be better off, so would the organizations. There is a burgeoning body of research evidence to support the need for collective efforts to support good health outcomes including mental health outcomes.  

Given that human nature is rooted in social considerations—we are wired to belong to social groups—collective well-being works with our strongly ingrained and natural tendencies to belong. Researchers at Yale looked at 75 predictors of collective well-being and found that “higher levels of diversity, access to health care and preventive care, and [high] socioeconomic measures such as education were the strongest predictors” of healthy communities. The researchers point out that engaging people in their communities helps to reduce loneliness, depression and anxiety.  

It is easier to consider one’s own individual well-being and do something about it, so it can be a challenge to think about how to implement collective well-being in a systematic way. However, it is not an impossible challenge, and it is one that school communities strive to accomplish through strong partnerships between parents, students and education staff. Together, we are better!