This study first aims to add to the literature on SPHC and workplace wellbeing (WW) in a university work environment by investigating the relationship between SPHCs, WW, and sQoL. Secondly, it aims to explore whether there exist other aspects of wellbeing pertinent to a multicultural workplace that have not yet been identified by current research. Achieving these aims may identify areas of focus for WW interventions to aid in personal recovery beyond symptomatic alleviation, benefiting both individuals and workplaces.

Based on the aims, the following hypotheses were developed:

To address the final aim, a qualitative component will explore how individuals in a multicultural workplace define wellbeing.

Invitations to respond to an online survey administered using Qualtrics were sent via e-mail to a randomly generated list of 2000 university staff stratified by department. A reminder email was sent 2 weeks after the first email to increase response rates.

A 57-item questionnaire gathered data on six areas: basic demographic information, understanding of wellbeing, presence of suspected psychological health conditions, level of distress, workplace psychological wellbeing, and quality of life.

A question on suspected psychological health status was posed to participants. Participants could indicate that they suspected having a psychological health condition (SPHC), had no suspicions of PHC (nSPHC), or preferred not to say (SPNTS).

To understand participants’ subjective understanding of wellbeing, an open-ended question was included in the questionnaire asking, “What does wellbeing mean for you personally?”

The single-item Global QoL Scale by Hyland and Sodergren (1996) was included to measure participants’ sQoL. Participants were asked to move a slider from a scale of 0–100 to a point that best describes their QoL. The measure has demonstrated good test–retest reliability (Hyland and Sodergren, 1996).

The Depression-Anxiety-Stress Scale 21 was used to measure participants’ levels of depression, anxiety, and stress. Each item is scored on a four-point Likert scale. The 21-item self-report measure has three sub-scales designed to measure states of depression, anxiety, and stress and has been found to have strong internal consistency (α range = 0.86–0.96), convergent validity, and discriminant validity in large clinical samples (Brown et al., 1997). Strong internal consistency was observed for all scales (α range = 0.80–0.91), and discriminant validity was noted among various disorders in non-clinical samples (Sinclair et al., 2011).

The 23-item Workplace PERMA profiler was used to measure subjective wellbeing in a workplace context. The scale was based on Seligman’s WBT (Butler and Kern, 2016) and has five key subscales: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. Each subscale has three items scored on a 10-point scale. The sum of the items from the five primary subscales generates an overall workplace wellbeing score. Several studies have validated the profiler, demonstrating strong internal consistency except for the Engagement subscale (α = 0.66), as well as strong convergent and divergent validity (Ryan et al., 2019).

Codebook thematic analysis, specifically the Framework Method developed by Ritchie and Spencer (1994), was the selected form of analysis for the qualitative component. The Framework method’s flexibility in integrating both deductive and inductive thematic analysis approaches (Gale et al., 2013) made it an ideal means of analysis in the current study. The current research interest in the PERMA framework makes a deductive approach ideal, as themes can be drawn from the PERMA framework. An inductive approach also allowed for the emergence of new themes beyond the PERMA framework through open coding and refinement.

A total of 214 responses were submitted, with 16 incomplete responses. The 198 completed responses were utilized for quantitative analysis (Table 1: Sociodemographic characteristics of population). Means and standard deviations for utilized measures across sociodemographic characteristics are reported in Table 2, and correlations for utilized measures are reported in Table 3.

A one-way ANOVA was performed to compare the effect of SPHC on workplace PERMA wellbeing scores with follow-up post-hoc tests using Tukey’s HSD Test for Multiple Comparisons.

A one-way ANOVA was performed to compare the effect of SPHC on sQoL with follow-up post-hoc tests using Tukey’s HSD Test for Multiple Comparisons.

SPSS add-on PROCESS Model 4 (Hayes, 2013) was run to assess whether workplace wellbeing PERMA scores mediate the relationship between self-reported depression, anxiety, and stress levels and sQoL.

This study aimed to explore how individuals within a diverse workplace conceptualize wellbeing. As such, participants were asked to define what wellbeing meant to them. Ritchie and Spencer's (1994) Framework Method, which integrates both inductive and deductive approaches to thematic analysis, was employed to develop themes from participants’ subjective perceptions of what wellbeing means and to determine whether new ideas relating to wellbeing would emerge beyond the PERMA framework. Initial code generation by two researchers yielded 49 individual codes. This was subsequently refined into 10 themes, which, when re-coded, resulted in a 97% inter-rater reliability rate. The remaining data were arbitrated by the third researcher, resulting in 477 statements from 214 responses, which fell into 10 themes (Table 8).

The themes are presented below in terms of frequency of appearance, with Psychological Health (N = 104), Physical Health (N = 77), and Positive Emotion (N = 77) being the top three most common responses.

The present research noted higher overall PERMA scores and individual PERMA facet scores in individuals from the nSPHC group compared to their counterparts from the SPHC group, with no single area being deemed less significant. This has implications on multiple levels. At the individual level, for those who experience SPHC but have yet to be diagnosed, conducting brief assessments and identifying gaps using the PERMA framework can also serve as a means of identifying areas of need and providing customized care. Interventions focusing on PERMA facets may then be helpful as a preventative strategy against psychological health concerns, with previous research showing the effectiveness of holistic PERMA-based interventions in mitigating psychological ill-health in areas such as distress, depression, anxiety, insomnia, and fear of disease progression in liver cancer patients (Guo et al., 2025). Such research suggests that interventions encompassing PERMA elements augment the current predominant symptomatic health management framework by emphasizing psychosocial elements beyond the mere absence of disease, thereby contributing to a more holistic healthcare model. On a broader level, within an organization, these results suggest that integrating PERMA elements and organizational policy may hold value in improving public health and wellbeing at a population level, such as through workplace wellbeing programs and policies.

While the current study did not explicitly compare levels of distress in individuals who suspected they had PHCs to individuals who did not suspect having PHCs, the significantly lower PERMA and sQoL levels of SPHC as compared to nSPHC groups converge with previous literature that demonstrated that individuals who suspected that they had psychological health conditions had lower QoL and were more likely to meet clinically significant levels of psychological health symptoms as compared to individuals who did not suspect any psychological health conditions (Liu et al., 2020).

Individuals in the SPHC group experience lower sQoL, suggesting there is a potential impact of their psychological health state on their sQoL. Furthermore, while they have insight and are concerned about their psychological health, they may not have sought a formal diagnosis. Barriers to help-seeking in culturally diverse populations include the cost of treatment, the belief that treatment was unnecessary as the health concern would eventually subside, and fear of discrimination (Subramaniam et al., 2019). In addition to conducting further research into the barriers to help-seeking, interventions such as psychoeducation to increase mental health literacy, destigmatization, and motivational enhancement can be implemented to increase formal help-seeking behavior (Xu et al., 2018). Improving access to affordable psychological healthcare in the workplace and at a societal level is also warranted.

Currently, many companies offer subsidized rates for physical health checkups for their staff. As individuals become more aware of the importance of psychological health, it may also be beneficial to incorporate psychological health screening into employee benefit packages, allowing interested individuals to seek help if needed.

Previous literature has discussed how general wellbeing is specifically associated with work-related quality of life (QoL) (McFadden et al., 2021), while the current findings contribute to the research on how workplace PERMA mediates the relationship between depression, anxiety, stress levels, and subjective quality of life (sQoL). This adds to the literature that demonstrated PERMA mediates the relationship between depression and QoL (Choi, 2020). The present results provide implications on how potentially increasing workplace wellbeing can help to improve overall sQoL. This would benefit not only individuals but also organizations and the wider community, given that psychological health concerns and related losses in productivity are estimated to cost the global economy USD 2.5 trillion per year (The Lancet Global Health, 2020).

Regarding the differences between depression, anxiety, and stress, while workplace wellbeing only partially mediated the relationship between depression and stress and sQoL, it fully mediated the relationship between anxiety and sQoL. This suggests that workplace wellbeing interventions may be crucial in improving the sQoL of individuals with higher anxiety levels as compared to higher depression and stress levels. Interventions targeted at individuals with higher levels of anxiety may be particularly effective in increasing job productivity, especially given the higher level of anxiety as compared to depression in the workplace (Deady et al., 2021) and how anxiety is associated with increased levels of poorer work functioning and absenteeism (Plaisier et al., 2010). Nevertheless, it remains important to work toward workplace wellbeing for workers in general, as there are high comorbidity rates between anxiety and depression (Groen et al., 2020).

Notably, a study by Weziak-Bialowolska et al. (2020) suggests that there are bidirectional effects between life satisfaction and work satisfaction, with the former having a greater impact on the latter than vice versa. Given the impact of workplace wellbeing on sQoL in the present research, it may be helpful for future studies to consider the combined effect of both non-work and workplace wellbeing on QoL, especially in relation to the amount of time individuals spend in their work life. This may then help inform how wellbeing interventions can be applied in both individual and workplace settings.

The rates of nondisclosure of suspected psychological health concerns (SPNTS = 10.1%, N = 20) in the present study appears on the higher end as compared to the rate of nondisclosure of other sensitive information, such as sexual activity and household income, ranging from 0.87 to 8.15% in past research (Tourangeau and Yan, 2007).

Respondents may have been cautious about divulging their psychological health status (PHS) for two reasons: first, it may be perceived as a sensitive topic, and second, respondents are concerned that the information they share may be disclosed to third parties (Tourangeau and Yan, 2007).

There were no differences in the sQoL of SPHC individuals and SPNTS individuals. However, both SPNTS and SPHC groups demonstrated significantly lower sQoL as compared to individuals who did not suspect they had psychological health conditions (nSPHC). This suggests that the SPNTS and SPHC groups are more similar to each other compared to the nSPHC group. While there are few studies on non-disclosure of PHS and levels of distress, previous research has demonstrated that non-disclosure of suicide ideation was associated with increased loneliness, poorer health, increased psychological distress, and more frequent suicide ideation (Mérelle et al., 2018). Importantly, Brouwers et al. (2019) suggests that employers can support employees with SPHCs but PNTS in the disclosure process by providing information about how they can disclose their PHC and who they should disclose it to so that individuals with PNTS may seek treatment more easily. Individuals who feel supported and are receiving treatment are also more likely to disclose PHS in the workplace (Reavley et al., 2017). It may prove more beneficial in workplace settings to facilitate ease of access to treatment (e.g., providing subsidized, anonymous therapy services) and foster healthy workplace relationships so that individuals who are hesitant to disclose their PHS would feel more comfortable seeking treatment and receive the support they need.

Respondents in the current study were not primed to Seligman’s WBT. While the five PERMA facets did appear as coded responses, five additional themes were identified: Psychological Health, Physical Health, Balance, Meeting of Basic Needs, and Autonomy. These themes may be referred to as lay conceptualizations of wellbeing, or intuitive structures and theories by lay people to define and experience wellbeing, definitions which may differ from how theorists attempt to interpret wellbeing (McMahan et al., 2012). Interestingly, several lay theories proposed by participants in the present study align with additional domains proposed by Seligman’s WBT or the more recent PERMA+4 (Donaldson et al., 2022). These four additional domains are namely:

The most frequently cited lay theory of wellbeing in the current study, Psychological Health, emphasizes the ability to cope with life stressors as a key component and bears resemblance to the PERMA+4’s proposed addition of Mindset. Psychological Health has previously been cited as a key lay conceptualization of wellbeing (Jarden et al., 2018), and such research, together with the current study, provides support for the proposed addition of this component as a PERMA+4 domain. Future studies may consider further exploring and refining the concept of psychological health and mindset for incorporation into the PERMA.

Physical Health in the present study was defined as being in good physical health, being free from physical ailments, and having the ability to maintain an optimal state of physical functioning. It is inherently similar to the definition of the PERMA+4’s conceptualization of Physical Health. The present study, along with others that also explore lay conceptualizations of wellbeing (Hone et al., 2015; Huang et al., 2022), provides support for incorporating physical health as a PERMA+4 domain.

Economic Security in the PERMA+4 also bears a resemblance to the current study’s theme of Meeting Basic Needs. It is supported by other studies on lay theories of wellbeing, citing the importance of concepts such as financial security (Downey, 2006) and infrastructural and food availability (Joshanloo et al., 2021) to human beings. Given the importance of cultural context in the development of lay theories (Joshanloo et al., 2021), the emergence of this theme may potentially indicate the current state of the world post-COVID, where job insecurity and financial anxiety are on the rise, justifying Economic Security as an additional facet of PERMA+4.

Apart from the similarities to the PERMA+4’s additional domains, the current study also identified other lay theories of wellbeing worthy of further exploration. Importantly, Positive Emotion and Psychological Health were coded as distinct themes, with Positive Emotion referring more to the experiencing of emotions such as happiness and peace, and Psychological Health referring to not just being in good psychological health but also being able to cope with adversity. The ability to cope with adverse experiences, at least in the present study, appears more frequently than the need to experience Positive Emotions. It is telling of the cultural diversity of the current population that these concepts appear as the two most important lay conceptualizations of wellbeing, given how Western-centric cultures tend to favor hedonistic notions of happiness (i.e., experiencing positive emotions) whilst many other cultures view suffering as an inevitable part of life (Joshanloo et al., 2021), possibly explaining here the necessity of being able to cope with challenges as a part of psychological health.

Balance was another frequently cited lay theory, referring not only to navigating between work and non-work activities but also to achieving balance in other areas outside of work and life (e.g., spiritual balance). While work-life balance has been defined as a lay theory in previous research (Hone et al., 2015), deeper notions of balance in non-Western cultures highlight the importance of maintaining a state of equilibrium between both positive and negative aspects while avoiding either extreme (Wong and Liu, 2018). Supporting this point, only one response in the data set defined wellbeing as not needing to work.

Autonomy was the final conceptualization of wellbeing, as derived from participants’ responses. While not part of Seligman’s WBT, autonomy appears as a key part of other wellbeing theories such as Ryff’s (1989) Scales of Psychological Wellbeing, which defines Autonomy as being self-determining and independent, and COMPAS-W, which defines Own-Worth as knowing one’s values and establishing healthy boundaries (Gatt et al., 2014). Autonomy may be a worthy contender for inclusion in the PERMA model in the future.

All in all, the above-derived lay theories of wellbeing demonstrate that, while there are parallels between general perception and theory, laypeople’s understanding of wellbeing adds a unique cultural and situational lens. It would then be important to carefully consider the distinct population in which wellbeing is being measured and craft interventions based on both theory and lay perceptions to cater to the identified population’s unique wellbeing needs.

At the same time, it may be important for researchers to acknowledge that there may never be a PERMA-nent understanding of wellbeing. Rather, wellbeing appears to be a constantly evolving concept, contingent upon time and space. Re-looking at definitions of wellbeing and refining wellbeing interventions may then need to occur periodically, especially in times of global upheaval, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Regarding this study’s limitations, as the research focused on individuals who experienced SPHC, the experiences of individuals with diagnosed PHCs were not explored. There was also no comparison made between how wellbeing is defined by individuals with SPHC and individuals without SPHC. This is a pity, as Connell et al. (2014) suggest that wellbeing may be defined differently for people with and without diagnosed PHC. Future studies may wish to expand on comparisons between individuals with diagnosed PHCs, individuals experiencing SPHCs, and individuals who do not have or suspect having PHCs.

A second limitation in the present research is that demographic factors, such as age, ethnicity, and gender, and how they may manifest differently within the PERMA framework, were not explored. Few studies to date have thoroughly explored these differences, or if explored, findings have been inconsistent. For example, Burke and Minton (2019) observed that Irish male students had higher PERMA scores as compared to their female counterparts. However, Al-Hendawi et al. (2024) note negligible gender differences in PERMA scores. Exploring sociodemographic differences in wellbeing and quality of life, as well as the possible mechanisms behind these observable differences, is worthy of consideration in future research. In addition, research on what specific groups consider lay theories of wellbeing would also be valuable, as the present research has reflected that individuals’ definitions of wellbeing expand beyond current theoretical definitions. Such information would be invaluable in crafting suitable positive psychology interventions for specific groups, which, in turn, could benefit society as a whole.

Third, a missed opportunity in the present study was to further explore which factors might cause individuals to disclose PHC factors that hinder seeking help or diagnosis if they experienced SPHC, and how these areas relate to wellbeing. Doing so can help address issues related to help-seeking and interventions for individuals who experience SPHC.

Finally, future studies may wish to expand on which aspects contribute to a greater sense of wellbeing in various parts of the population (SPHC, no SPHC, SPNTS, diagnosed PHC). This is essential for developing interventions that promote both symptomatic and personal recovery.