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Mental health conditions affect almost a quarter of the population who die on average 10-20 years earlier than the general population. Smoking is the single largest cause of this gap in life expectancy. Smoking rates among people with mental health conditions have barely changed over the last 20 years during a time when rates have been steadily falling in the general population. Action is needed to address the growing difference in smoking rates among those with a mental health condition compared to the general population. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This work has been informed by the input of a wide range of experts and professionals from across public health, mental health and the wider NHS.

People with a mental health condition are just as likely to want to stop smoking as other smokers but they face more barriers to quitting and are more likely to be dependant and therefore need more support. Quitting smoking does not exacerbate poor mental health; in fact the positive impact of smoking cessation on anxiety and depression appears to be at least as large as antidepressants.

The full report outlines the high-level ambitions and the specific actions that must be realised to drive down smoking rates among those with a mental health condition.

Women leaders struggle with the persistent paradoxical expectations. Literature suggests that a paradox mindset helps to leverage these tensions. This study aims to understand the nexus between the microfoundations of individual women leaders’ experiences, their responses and the organisational context, which enables or hinders their paradox mindset.

This study adopted a qualitative approach by conducting semistructured interviews with 14 women, all senior leaders in corporate South Africa.

The results reveal the interaction in the nexus between, firstly, women leaders’ authenticity and awareness as key anchors that enable them to adopt a paradox mindset and, secondly, the organisation’s role in creating hindrances or opportunities to leverage tensions. Women leaders in our sample applied one of two strategies: they either adapted to the environment or curated a subenvironment. This study shows that, if done authentically, through her own agency, a woman can influence interactions that make it easier to manage tensions within her environment, especially those created by negative performance evaluation because of unconscious institutional gender bias.

The extent to which the findings of this research can be generalised is constrained by the selected research context.

This research contributes to the literature on paradox theory by revealing organisational contextual influencers, such as institutional bias in negative performance evaluation, which hinders a woman leader’s opportunity to be hired or promoted. These organisational influences also interact with women leaders’ ability to embrace paradox and internally leverage agentic and communal tensions.

Opportunities to observe presidential leadership capacities and to be an active citizen in appraising presidential leadership practices have increased the relevance of perceptions of candidates’ leadership qualities in presidential and campaign politics. Based on prior evidence, the current study predicted and confirmed that a sample of 1,087 young voter perceptions of presidential candidates’ leadership practices predict intent to vote for a particular candidate after accounting for party affiliation. Additionally, party affiliation was reconfirmed as predicting differences in perceived leadership practices. Interestingly, male and female perceptions of presidential leadership practices varied and were contextualized by factors related to identity development. The study concludes with a discussion of implications as they pertain to leadership theory and leadership education.