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If you routinely misplace your wallet, yet can deconstruct complex ideas with ease. Many bright, creative minds are optimised for depth and novelty rather than repetition and routine. In everyday life, that can look like forgetting appointments, skipping small steps in a process, or losing track of time, while, in the very same week, producing sophisticated analyses, original insights, or elegant problem-solving. Psychology recognises this as a common, non-pathological patter

The recovery paradigm has reshaped mental health practice by moving beyond the narrow focus on symptom reduction. While some models, such as the Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP), emerged directly from consumer-led activism, the collaborative recovery model was developed within academic and service settings, blending psychological theory with recovery philosophy. Developed in Australia by Oades and colleagues in the early 2000s, CRM draws heavily on positive psychology, co

The recovery paradigm has generated a variety of tools designed to translate values of hope, empowerment, and autonomy into practical frameworks for supporting people with mental health concerns. Among these tools is the Recovery Star, often referred to as the Ten Point Recovery Star, which has become one of the most widely used outcome and planning measures in community mental health services across the United Kingdom, Australia, and beyond. Developed to address the need for

Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) is a type of therapy that doesn’t focus on what you’re thinking, but on how you respond to your thoughts. Instead of asking people to challenge or “argue with” negative ideas (as in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT), MCT looks at the thinking habits that keep people stuck — like worry, rumination (going over the same problem again and again), or being constantly on edge. These patterns form what’s called the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS).

Abstract This literature review critically examines the helping process as both a foundational framework in social work and a contested site shaped by power, culture, and politics. Beginning with the historical roots of charity movements, casework, and welfare state structures, it traces the development of canonical models such as Compton and Galaway’s problem-solving approach and Sheafor and Horejsi’s planned change framework. While these models provided clarity and professi

Abstract Happiness has long been conceptualised as both the pursuit of pleasure and the realisation of purpose. Contemporary psychological science distinguishes between hedonic well-being—defined as the relative prevalence of positive over negative affect and the presence of life satisfaction—and eudaimonic well-being, which emphasises meaning, purpose, and self-realisation. Crucially, the goal of well-being is not to achieve unbroken happiness but to function adaptively, reg

Mental health is too often framed as a question of individual pathology, as though distress arises in isolation from the conditions of people’s lives. Yet decades of research demonstrate that mental health is profoundly shaped by the social world: by structures of inequality, by the organisation of care, and by the ways in which societies include or exclude those experiencing distress (Patel et al., 2018; Marmot, 2020). To understand mental health outcomes, then, we must look

Abstract Social work and human service practice are characterised by high levels of emotional labour, systemic complexity, and frequent exposure to trauma. These conditions place practitioners at risk of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma, making self-care, resilience, and professional sustainability central concerns for the profession. This literature review critically examines how these concepts are understood, enacted, and contested in contemporary scholarsh

Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, better known as CBT, is one of the most widely practised approaches in modern psychology. It’s built on a straightforward idea: the way we interpret situations has a big impact on how we feel and how we respond. It’s about the meaning we attach to events. CBT teaches people to spot unhelpful thought patterns, test them out, and try new ways of coping, which often leads to improvements in mood and day-to-day functioning. The roots of CBT can be tra

Over the past three decades, the recovery paradigm has reshaped mental health policy, practice, and research by shifting the focus from symptom reduction to the pursuit of meaning, autonomy, and citizenship. Unlike the biomedical model, which emphasises diagnosis, pathology, and professional control, recovery-based approaches foreground hope, self-determination, and the recognition of lived experience as legitimate expertise (Byrne et al., 2015; Bonney & Stickley, 2008). Reco

Abstract Influence is a fundamental process in psychology, shaping persuasion, conformity, obedience, and identity development. Classic studies on conformity (Asch, 1956), obedience (Milgram, 1963), and minority influence (Moscovici, 1980) laid the groundwork for understanding how individuals align with or resist social pressures. Contemporary research extends these insights, showing that influence operates through both cognitive and affective mechanisms, including heuristic

Abstract This literature review synthesizes contemporary emotion science to integrate functional, discrete–dimensional, and appraisal–constructive accounts. A protocol-guided search of peer-reviewed work (2019–2025) with select seminal sources supports a pluralist framework: emotions coordinate salience, physiology, and action; occupy a low-dimensional affective space; and are shaped by appraisal and conceptual knowledge. Converging evidence implicates distributed neural netw

Abstract Humans are adapted for care and coalition; the same neurocognitive systems that make us protect infants and invest in partners also coordinate threat defence and, under certain conditions, enable cruelty. According to Rhoads and colleagues, extraordinarily altruistic individuals show distinctive subcortical connectivity within caregiving circuits, underscoring how deeply our prosocial dispositions are instantiated in brain architecture (Rhoads et al., 2023). Yet, as

Abstract Despite the popularity of manifestation, affirmations, and vision boards, recent psychological and neuroscientific evidence reveals that these practices often fail—or even cause harm—when applied superficially or without grounding in a credible therapeutic process. As Smith et al. note, such practices may produce cognitive dissonance and identity disruption rather than growth. Neuroplasticity requires repeated practice, emotional salience, and behavioural reinforceme