Well-being, Psychological Adjustments and Effective Social Support Giving

As a popular research topic spanning a few decades, social support research has generated voluminous empirical findings which have shown the huge potential of utilising its benefits in different occupational fields apart from the fields of health psychology and medical health where this topic originated. The previous chapter clarifies the different conceptualisations of social support research and the instruments that measure the effects/outcomes, as well as methodological concerns. This chapter continues to establish the theoretical ground of social support research by elaborating the concepts related to psychological well-being and describing the psychological adjustment of people who need support. It then explores the conditions of effective social support giving. First, it describes the central concept—well-being—a concept being used to conceptualise its benefits for human beings. Second, based on the backdrop provided by the well-being literature, the chapter further discusses the emotional status of various groups of people in society who encounter life situations and experience critical circumstances which may cause them much effort to regulate their emotions and adjust themselves in living in their social environment. Finally, the conditions and factors that lead to effective social support are explored, addressing a list of parameters that describe effective social support giving. In sum, the chapter aims to achieve the following purposes: (1) to present a comprehensive definition of well-being and its associated psychological theories; (2) to discuss the inner self and emotional struggles of groups of needy people in society; (3) to identify facilitative conditions of social support and effective social support giving and (4) to discuss the implications of the theories of well-being and effective social support strategies to the situation of teaching in schools. The chapter ends with a list of suggestions about effective social support measures and some conditions that inhibit the effectiveness of social support. It suggests that the effectiveness of social support giving is dependent upon the nature of offering the support, types of support given at different times of need, support givers’ relationship with the support recipient, support givers’ experience, gender, common cultural traits and personalities of support receivers. The content of this chapter is planned in a way which leads readers to construct the knowledge of and appreciate the value of social support, the implications for application to the field of education are also discussed at the end.