Well-Being Book Live on Publisher Website
My new book on health and well-being of professionals in creative careers (in the media) went live on the publisher website today!
Super excited to see the new book, Well-Being And Creative Careers: What Makes You Happy Can Also Make You Sick, as of today official and 'live' on the Intellect website! It should be available for order and distribution worldwide between June-September this year... At the moment (February 2025), we in the final copy-editing, indexing and typesetting stages of the manuscript.
From the book description (and yes, there is a Tim Gunn/Project Runway reference in there):
"There is a mental health crisis among media professionals around the world - in journalism, advertising/marketing/PR, film and television, digital games, music (recording and performance), and online content creation. The crisis consists of mental issues – with extraordinarily high instances of anxiety, trauma, burnout, and depression; physical ailments - prevalent substance abuse, unhealthy living, sleep problems, and exhaustion; and spiritual problems – including people becoming disenchanted with the promise of a creative career.
At the same time, most professionals claim to love doing what they do, suggesting that what makes people happy also makes them sick.
This book documents what is particular about well-being in creative careers in the media, offers an analysis of systemic issues throughout the media industries that explain why so many practitioners get sick on the job and shows what can be done. What ends up causing work-related stress disorders is a combination of a lack of reciprocity between what people bring to the job and what the industry offers in return, organizational injustice as people perceive policies and decisions at work to be discriminatory and unfair, and persistent high workloads.
In conclusion, Deuze suggests that the labor-of-love work ethic that is so typical of the way people 'make it work' can be a problem as much as it provides a way forward."