Us & We

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The Latin phrase "bonum autem facientes non deficiamus tempore enim suo metemus non deficientes" translates to: "But let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up" (Latin Vulgate Bible, n.d.). This expression encourages perseverance in doing good deeds, assuring us that there will be rewards for such efforts if we remain steadfast. How do leaders maintain energy, enthusiasm, and perseverance daily and stay committed to doing good deeds for those they steward? Introduce the model of "Us and We" and unlearn "I and Me."

To contribute to the learning and acknowledge a trait tied to leadership that resonates with the concept of team building, authentic leadership aims to address putting the interests of others before a leader's self-interest. Without subtracting from scholars, the credit applied to Steffens et al. (2021) suggests that leaders who are in tune with their moral compass, able to highlight their value system, and simultaneously identify with their shared community enable their followers to perceive them as genuinely authentic.

Of course, one should hope that organizational influencers put others' interests before self-interest in an ideal situation, and it is not impossible to think of cases where the contrary has increased. As organizational citizens, it is postulated that rules, regulations, and laws are not needed to govern others; instead, someone is required to help empower others.

According to Steffens et al. (2021), leaders stay true to themselves in four distinct ways. First, they are aware of themselves and how they act, behave, and appear in the world; in basic terms, self-awareness is a characteristic. Second, an authentic leader can be transparent, interpersonally vulnerable, and visible to others. Third, authentic leaders are open to the ideas of others and welcome thoughts contrary to their own. Finally, their value and belief systems regulate organizational decision-making.

In summary, psychologists Steffens et al. (2021) have found that if the aforementioned character traits exist in leaders who aim for an authentic style of influence, organizational achievement improves, employee exhaustion and fatigue are lower, and employees engage in the work.

References:

Latin Vulgate Bible. (n.d.). The Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians: Chapter 6:9. https://latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=1&b=9&c=6

Steffens, N. K., Wolyniec, N., Okimoto, T., Mols, F., Haslam, S. A., & Kay, A. (2021). Knowing me, knowing us: Personal and collective self-awareness enhances authentic leadership and leader endorsement. The Leadership Quarterly, 32(6). https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/z2r7f

Tedium Vitae

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What is mental health, or what does it mean to have good mental health? It is helpful to understand definitions. World Health Organization provides an overall umbrella term for mental health that scholars such as Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) capture by defining it as such: when good mental health is present, the vital life force of a person can be focused such that an individual can actualize their skills and capabilities such that they can manage and engage with the usual difficulties and adversities in life that all persons experience as well as being able to maintain and engage in a constructive and generative existence and create, promote and uplift their community.

Agonizingly, the following data may surprise the reader. One out of every five adults, ages 18-64, in the past year have experienced an episode of mental dysfunction adversely affecting the way they show up in the world, and suicide has increased in young children ages 10 to 24 as a leading cause of death in America (SAMHSA, n.d.) Additionally, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (n.d.) reports that roughly fifty million adults ages eighteen and older have reported some mental health disturbance since the pandemic.

What is more known is that Lloyd-Jones and McKibbin (2018), contributors to standard medical textbooks, state that health promotion aims to prevent the risk factors that propagate disease. As such, the absence of disease is not equivocal with being healthy. Health promotion involves screening for risk factors and educating others to improve their health, not just prolonging one's life.

A prolonged life with a disability is not ideal nor conducive to the quality of life of an individual without a limiting disability. Elements of one's life include the physical and psychological aspects (Lloyd-Jones & McKibbin, 2018) and the spiritual (Cook, 2022) because often when people get ill, they rely on their faith/values and beliefs to weather life's difficulties.

In a novel article, Population Mental Health Science: Guiding Principles and Initial Agenda, Dodge et al.(2024), a prominent psychologist at Duke University, highlight the significance and reality of population and societal mental health. Suppose the purpose and goal of medical intervention are to avert the occurrence of sudden death from preventable causes, for instance, sudden death from a cardiac event, according to Lloyd-Jones & McKibbin (2018). In that case, the goal of mental health intervention is to prevent dying of desperation and hopelessness (Dodge et al., 2024).

Furthermore, Dodge et al. (2024) inform us that mental health challenges persist as a population health concern as people struggle with, to name a few, life stressors such as the inability to secure food for themselves, ethnic displacement from the home country of origin, global economic uncertainty, and the never-ending natural disasters contribute to and exacerbate peoples inability to cope with life's challenges as adults that have trickled down to the nations youth who also bear the burden of struggling with their mental health.

Is a sense of purpose a strategy for adapting to life's adversities? Scholars and faith-based professionals explain purpose as it relates to the lifespan. According to Rick Warren, author of the popular Christian book The Purpose Driven Life (Warren, 2002), the opening pages get right to the point by first acknowledging that purpose related to one's life is not self-oriented but connected to God's higher purposes for us as we are connected to other individuals.

Let us consider other academics as well. According to Kashdan et al. (2023), another academic in the study of psychology, in their illuminating article Purpose in Life: A Resolution on the Definition, Conceptual Model, and Optimal Measurement, they point to purpose, describing egocentric and altruistic purposes for living. For example, the authors describe egocentric purposes for self-furtherance and self-securing in contrast to other-oriented purposes to benefit society.

Biblical scholars have addressed the motif of purpose in life as well. According to Ryken et al. (1998), a quest is a journey, a search, or a person's experiential story that can be interpreted as an individual purpose. The personal venture or pursuit involves physical exertion and often mental fortitude to accomplish and complete the tasks set out either by the individual or as a means of competitiveness, for proving oneself or searching for meaning as it relates to the lifespan.

Suppose we consider the elements of a purpose-driven life oriented to serving others despite encountering life difficulties, as Szasz (1960) describes. Can strategies or conceptualizations be incorporated into one's life to ameliorate the adverse effects of poor mental health as a response to improving the wellness and mental health of individuals, neighborhoods, and the greater community?

Neuroscientists believe answers exist. According to those who are subject matter experts in the study of neuroscience and biology, Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) inform us that the fundamental goal of psychological well-being is to improve upon individual logic and thought and mental reasoning, increase the ability of persons to perform activities to support the psyche and instill skills and behaviors with resources for stimulating personhood resiliency.

14 Spheres of Psychological Health Promotion

The following fourteen spheres of mental health promotion are distilled below and necessary to address the overall population's mental health crisis. They are geared toward young adults but applicable to all ages.

First, understanding mental health vocabulary through education and training to help others be able to advocate for themselves and seek healthcare resources by recognizing the manifestation of adverse mental health symptoms and improving behaviors toward mental health are integral. Next, by reducing the stigmatization and negative attitudes toward others with mental illness through personal advocacy and mentorship relations with young adults (Fusar-Poli, 2020), the population's mental health can improve. Additionally, instilling values and beliefs about mental health through bolstering individual self-esteem and finding value in one's contribution to life despite managing mental health challenges is lacking.

How can coaches, teachers, even university professors, the local dentist, church groups, and other community services personnel be trained, certified, and well informed as unorthodox and progressive means and measures to support the current overwhelmed and flooded demand for mental healthcare clinicians as Dodge et al. (2024) suggest?

Fusar-Poli et al. (2020) highlight the connections to optimal mental health by helping young adults promote high-level mental governing skills. Also critical and invaluable are the training and education platforms that encourage school and work performance in today's youth and emerging young adults. Managing feelings by assisting others in understanding their emotional response to situations and experiences and helping others understand their conduct in response to environmental stimuli, either positive or negative, are supportive measures. Self-direction and efficacy training are needed to help individuals face and engage with life challenges, opportunities, and possibilities. If performed well, interpersonal relationship mentoring and training to help individuals understand social, cultural, and ethnic signals and hints in personal relationships optimize the population's mental health.

Finally, helping individuals to formulate, cultivate, and connect through family and peer support connections promotes sound mental health. Most pointedly, addressing the interrelation of physical strength and vigor through sports activities and active play and extracurricular time, nutrition, sleep, and rest habits to support mental well-being is just as vital to supporting the sexual health of young adults with training through intimate partnership education. Helping individuals connect meaning in life through challenges and defining quality of life-related to experiential fulfillment can support the effort to reduce the barriers to optimal mental health and, by extension, address the growing concern of population mental health challenge (Dodge et al., 2024 & Fusar-Poli et al., 2020).

References:

Cook, C. C. H. (2022). Spirituality and Religion in Psychiatry. In Spirituality and Psychiatry (2nd ed., pp. 1–22). Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Dodge, K. A., Prinstein, M. J., Evans, A. C., Ahuvia, I. L., Alvarez, K., Beidas, R. S., Brown, A. J., Cuijpers, P., Denton, E., Hoagwood, K. E., Johnson, C., Kazdin, A. E., McDanal, R., Metzger, I. W., Rowley, S. N., Schleider, J., & Shaw, D. S. (2024). Population Mental Health Science: Guiding Principles and Initial Agenda. American Psychologist, 79(6), 805–823. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001334

Kashdan, T. B., Goodman, F. R., McKnight, P. E., Brown, B., & Rum, R. (2023). Purpose in life: A resolution on the definition, conceptual model, and optimal measurement. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001223

Lloyd-Jones, D. M., & McKibbin, Kathleen M. (2018). Promoting good health. In J. Larry Jameson & Anthony S. Fauci & Dennis L. Kasper & Stephen L. Hauser & Dan L. Longo & Joseph Loscalzo (20th Eds., Vol. 1), Harrison's principles of internal medicine (pp. 8–13). McGraw-Hill Education.

Fusar-Poli, P., Salazar de Pablo, G., De Micheli, A., Nieman, D. H., Correll, C. U., Kessing, L. V., Pfennig, A., Bechdolf, A., Borgwardt, S., Arango, C., & van Amelsvoort, T. (2020). What is good mental health? A scoping review. European Neuropsychopharmacology, 31, 33–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroneuro.2019.12.105

Ryken, L., Wilholt, J. C., Longman III, T., Duriez, C., Penney, D., & Reid, D. G. (Eds.). (1998). Quest. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (pp. 690–692).

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (n.d.). Mental health: Get the facts. SAMHSA. https://www.samhsa.gov/mental-health/what-is-mental-health/facts

Szasz, T. S. (1960). The Myth of Mental Illness. The American Psychologist, 15(2), pg. 113–118. 

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Mental illness. National Institute of Mental Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness

Warren, R. (2002). The Purpose Driven Life. Zondervan.

Do nurses pay a "well-being" tax?

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According to Choflet et al.(2022), the academic literature for nurses describes symptoms that articulate and define a nurse's traits and behaviors with an impassioned nonverbal declaration of drudgery, lack of energy, despair, and pessimism as what is commonly known as "burnout." In addition, the literature suggests that secondary causes of the feelings associated with the work involved in caring for society's most ill patients adversely affect the mental health of nurses.

Along with that, literature abounds on the mental health of leaders' wellbeing, with a broad definition that defines three components of health: the individual's mental wellness, their physical or biological personal wellness, and the overall wellness of their interpersonal support systems (Oc & Chintakananda, 2025). How do nurses take care of themselves?

"Burnout" or "compassion fatigue" is a common term found in the healthcare literature, but hearing about it, speaking about it, or talking openly about it is somewhat taboo. Nurses are not alone in experiencing burnout at work. It is common among physicians, who may also describe feelings of patient and provider withdrawal, isolation from other healthcare team members, a loss of purpose in helping and caring for others, and a disconnect from one's calling (Longo, 2018).

Other authors acknowledge drug use and dependency in nurses and forecast chilling insights for those of us who have professional caring careers. Gabele et al. (2023) signal an alarming statistic that roughly just under 20% of practicing nurses in the U.S. have a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol and other substances.

To the extent that nurses choose coping mechanisms of alcohol and other substances to manage symptoms of nurse-patient tensions and worry, nervousness and agitation, sadness, melancholy, and, unfortunately, the temptation to take one's own life (Choflet et al., 2022) how can those charged with stewarding others help, support and empower nurses and other members of the healthcare team to promote wellbeing and seeking help? Awareness conversations and measures to reduce stigma are needed.

Psychological Safety

Academics have written extensively in the healthcare literature regarding workplace environments where speaking up without fear of being embarrassed, humiliated, or accused of expressing how one feels about any given situation at work is what is known as a psychologically safe workplace. In other words, Camilleri et al. (2023) explain the type of workplace climate where all staff can discuss topics of misunderstanding, miscalculations, and clarification seeking without again being ridiculed. Often, psychologically safe environments are touted as best practice for staff to speak up, for instance, in preventing medication errors (Camilleri et al., 2023) for patient safety.

How do workplaces morph to follow a psychologically safe workplace where topics, as mentioned before, for mental health and alcohol and/or drug dependency, can be brought up ethically and morally in appropriate manners to help those suffering ultimately? Again, it begins with awareness, education, assessment, and knowing when to intervene.

Recognize and Empathize

Nurse leaders can take an assessment of staff behaviors and share with others attitudes that could red flag a potential staffer who is struggling, such as tardiness, increased absenteeism, tired and fatigued work habits, as well as the most apparent signs as anyone demonstrating characteristics of being under the influence of mood-altering substance would present such as altered alertness and speech variations, increased irritability at work, avoidance behaviors, and out of the regular personal behavior shift disappearances (Gabele et al., 2023).

In addition, since nurses are the frontline administrators and dispensers of patient medication, mainly controlled substances, and have medication dispensing equipment user access, nurse leaders and colleagues can be watchful and attentive to medication distribution processes.

Pharmacy equipment, syringes, hypodermic needles, and intravenous access kits, such as tourniquets, alcohol swabs, and gauze sponges, in conjunction with empty used medication vials, empty medication packaging, and other paraphernalia surrounding the work environment, such as oral and intravenous narcotics and benzodiazepines, that are left unattended in areas where they are atypical should raise caution (Gabele et al., 2023). Examples include restroom trash, coffee and soda lounges, and areas for break time and workstations.

Gabele et al. (2023) also caution the new nurse leader and the seasoned nurse manager to pay attention to instances where medication variances are increasing, such as documented narcotic administrations in the EMR but diminished waste documentation in medication dispensing reservoirs. These highlight unaccounted-for discrepancies and variances indicating potential medication diversion activity.

Courageous Support

Understanding that each organization has its policy and procedures for dealing with situations such as an altered employee or when it is discovered that drug diversion is suspected and confirmed, corrective measures must be followed according to institutional policy. Although never an easy encounter, Gabele et al. (2023) remind the nurse leader to help the staff individual be dismissed and immediately help them seek professional help through intervention, counseling, and recovery sources.

Supporting a psychologically safe work environment that fosters a speak-up culture in support of nurse wellbeing is one of those elements that leaders can promote through staff engagement, especially during the post-pandemic period when nurses are listed as at risk for self-harm resulting in death due to alcohol dependence and recreational and pharmaceutical dependency on drugs adversely affecting there physical and psychological health (Choflet et al., 2022). 

Engagement huddles and conversational rounding regarding delicate, intricate, and high-risk conversations about alcohol and substance use in the workplace are hard to navigate. However, with visibility, open access to leadership, and intentional listening (Camirelli et al., 2023), leaders can help support those who may need it most during their most demanding and vulnerable time.

References:

Camilleri, M. A., Allegra, M., & Kearney, J. (2023). Answering the wake-up call to nurse leaders: Five practices to restore psychological safety after the Vaught case. Nurse Leader, 21(2), 213–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2022.12.020

Choflet, A., Barnes, A., Zisook, S., Lee, K. C., Ayers, C., Koivula, D., Ye, G., & Davidson, J. (2022). The nurse leader's role in nurse substance use, mental health, and suicide in a peripandemic world. Nursing Administration Quarterly, 46(1), 19–28. https://doi.org/10.1097/naq.0000000000000510

Gabele, D., Keels, K. M., & Blake, N. (2023). Out of the Shadows and into the Light: Destigmatization of substance use disorder in Nursing. Nurse Leader, 21(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2023.04.003

Longo, Dan L. (2018). Approach to the patient with cancer. In J. Larry Jameson & Anthony S. Fauci & Dennis L. Kasper & Stephen L. Hauser & Dan L. Longo & Joseph Loscalzo (20th Eds., Vol. 1), Harrison's principles of internal medicine (pp. 435-443). McGraw-Hill Education.

Oc, B., & Chintakananda, K. (2025). Wellbeing of formal leaders: A critical and interdisciplinary review of predictors shaping leader wellbeing. The Leadership Quarterly, 36(1), 101842. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2024.101842