Emergent Practices in Wellness Design · 2026 Wellness Report
Sources
Every numbered claim in the report, with its source and the disagreements around it. The number on the page is the number here.
Sourced: published evidenceContested: cited, and the field disagreesLineage: adapted, not citedObservation: from practice, no number
One: Nervous System Literacy
1
McEwen (1998), The New England Journal of Medicine. Review; cited for the concept of allostatic load, not an effect size.
2
Guidi et al. (2021), Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Systematic review; the current allostatic-load evidence.
3
Khalsa et al. (2018), Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. Interoception is trainable; carries the somatic-literacy claim.
4
Porges (2011), The Polyvagal Theory. Contested. Grossman et al. (2026), Clinical Neuropsychiatry, with 38 co-signatories, argue the theory's core premises are not defensible; Porges replies in the same issue. Perceived safety and co-regulation predate the theory and stand.
Two: Mental Health as the Ground
5
National Center for Health Statistics (2024), National Health Statistics Reports No. 213. Anxiety 18.2% and depression 21.4% in 2022, up from 15.6% and 18.5% in 2019.
6
Gross & Levenson (1997), Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The cost of expressive suppression.
Three: The Return of Relationship
7
Coan, Schaefer & Davidson (2006), Psychological Science. n=16; a reanalysis at n=110 found no support for the proposed mechanism. The direction holds; the mechanism is unsettled.
8
Beckes & Coan (2011), Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Social baseline theory. Theory, not data.
9
Hochschild (1983), The Managed Heart. Origin of emotional labour.
10
Maslach & Leiter (2016), World Psychiatry. Burnout in the helping professions. Open access.
Four: Beyond Representation
11
Cheryan et al. (2009), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Physical environment shapes belonging.
12
Tervalon & Murray-García (1998), Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved. Cultural humility, a critique of competence-as-credential.
Sue et al. (2007), American Psychologist, racial microaggressions. Contested. Lilienfeld (2017) argues the research program's claims outrun its evidence; Williams (2020) defends and extends it, both in Perspectives on Psychological Science. The disagreement is shown, not resolved.
Five: Pleasure Is Not a Reward
15
Fredrickson (2001), American Psychologist. The broaden hypothesis. No ratio or tipping-point claim; that offshoot was retracted.
16
Garland et al. (2010), Clinical Psychology Review. Positive affect, savoring, and stress regulation.
Six: Spirituality Without Bypass
17
Fox, Cashwell & Picciotto (2017), Spirituality in Clinical Practice. The SBS-13, n=661; the only validated spiritual-bypass instrument.
18
Goldberg et al. (2022), Psychotherapy Research. Meditation-related adverse effects: 32.3% lifetime, 10.6% with functional impairment, n=434.
Craik & Lockhart (1972), Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. Levels of processing; carries integration and the illusion-of-understanding line.
22
Orben & Przybylski (2019), Nature Human Behaviour. Contested, in both directions. Digital technology explains at most 0.4% of variance in adolescent well-being, n=355,358, which cuts against this section's implied argument. Twenge et al. (2018) contra; Twenge et al. (2022) separates social media from television and finds larger effects for girls.
Insert: At the Reference Desk
23
Urban Librarians Unite (2022), Urban Library Trauma Study. 68.5% report violent or aggressive patron behaviour, 22% from coworkers. n=568, IMLS-funded. An advocacy organization, methodologically transparent.
24
Dudak, Comito & Zabriskie (2022), Public Library Quarterly. “You can’t self-care your way out of a broken system.”
25
Wahler et al. (2020), Families in Society. Libraries as de facto social service.
26
Provence & Wahler (2025), Families in Society. Libraries as crisis-intervention sites; staff and social workers define crisis differently.
27
Scoping review of social work in public libraries (2023), Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association. 53 published records.
28
Rider et al. (2024), BMC Public Health. Opioid response in libraries; 60.7% aware of on-site activity. Documents cameras, security, and furniture rearranged for sightlines.
29
Robinson (2019), In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Securitization harms BIPOC, homeless, and mentally ill patrons. Open peer review, open access.
30
Ettarh (2018), In the Library with the Lead Pipe. Vocational awe; coined the term.
31
Urban Libraries Council (2025), Library Insights Report. Incident reports 29% higher in 2023 than in 2022. Member survey, self-reported.
32
Floegel (2019), “A Good Intention Gone Awry.” Interviews with adult queer makerspace users; normative values embedded in library makerspaces discourage queer use even where staff intentions are good.
33
Cohen (1997), “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” GLQ 3(4). Single-axis queer politics erases oppression running through race, class, and poverty.
34
Costanza-Chock (2020), Design Justice, MIT Press. Whether a design reduces opportunity for marginalized people does not depend on intent. Effect is the measure.
35
Hudson (2017), “On ‘Diversity’ as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies.” Diversity language lets a field acknowledge its whiteness without requiring structural change.
36
Browne (2015), Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, Duke University Press. Surveillance of Black life as a long-standing norm rather than an aberration.
Conceptual Lineage
·
These are adapted, not cited. No study stands behind a lineage. They are named because the argument in this report is not original to it.
·
Tricia Hersey (2022), Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, Little, Brown Spark. Rest as a stolen right being reclaimed, not a reward earned inside grind culture.
·
adrienne maree brown (2019), Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, AK Press. Pleasure as infrastructure for sustaining collective work rather than indulgence.
·
Cathy J. Cohen (1997), “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” GLQ. Coalition built across shared structural position rather than a single identity axis.
·
Kevin Quashie (2012), The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture, Rutgers University Press. Black interiority that does not have to announce itself as resistance.
·
Ramon Amaro (2022), The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black Being, Sternberg Press. Inclusion inside an unchanged system as a trap rather than a remedy.
·
Katie G. Cannon (1988), Black Womanist Ethics, American Academy of Religion Academy Series. Embodied moral wisdom carrying its own authority without institutional sign-off.
·
Karla FC Holloway (2002), Passed On: African American Mourning Stories, A Memorial, Duke University Press. Black death care as a parallel economy built under exclusion.
Twenty-one claims in this report carry the orange observation mark and no number. They are professional observation from practice, named as such. The Note on Method at the front is their license.
On Purpose · ULCON 2026
The sources behind the talk, in the order they appear. The number is the slide.
04
ConceptCathy J. Cohen, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens,” GLQ, 1997
04
ConceptDavid James Hudson, “On ‘Diversity’ as Anti-Racism in Library and Information Studies,” 2017
04
ConceptCohen, GLQ 3(4), 1997. Hudson, JCLIS 1(1), 2017. ALA Diversity Counts, 2009 to 2010 update: 12 percent of credentialed librarians were people of color, 5.1 percent African American.
ConceptSasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice, MIT Press, 2020
15
ConceptDain Floegel, “A Good Intention Gone Awry,” 2019
15
ConceptCostanza-Chock, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, MIT Press, 2020, introduction. Floegel, Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2019.
17
HistoryYale University Library exhibition, “We Are Everywhere: Lesbians in the Archive”
HistoryBerman, Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People, 1971. In the Library with the Lead Pipe, 2022, on the heading changes. Komich, Contingent Magazine, 26 April 2022.
19
HistoryWayne A. Wiegand and Shirley A. Wiegand, The Desegregation of Public Libraries in the Jim Crow South, 2018 · Brenda Mitchell-Powell, Public in Name Only, 2022
19
HistoryEncyclopedia Virginia, 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In. Alexandria Library, alexlibraryva.org/1939-sit-in. New America, The Library Sit-In of 1939. Mitchell-Powell, Public in Name Only, 2022.
20
Concept and dataSimone Browne, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, 2015
20
Concept and dataCenter for American Progress with NORC at the University of Chicago, June 2020, n=1,528
20
Concept and dataWilliams Institute, UCLA School of Law, “Policing LGBQ People,” May 2021. Generations Study against the Police-Public Contact Survey