Positive thinking

  Angel Urbina-Garcia, University of Hull Diagnoses of mental disorders and drug prescriptions among school-age children have skyrocketed over the last two decades. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that 20% of children experience mental disorders – such as depression, anxiety, ADHD and autism – at any given time. This is a significant problem in the UK, where one in eight children between the ages of five and 19 has been diagnosed with an emotional or behavioural disorder . Even children as young as five are getting ill: according to the latest reports, 6% of five year olds suffer from a mental disorder. The challenges are greater still for children from low income families, who are four times more likely to develop mental health problems than their better off peers. While home life, friends, social media and body image all have an impact on the mental health of children, a recent report from The Children’s Society found that more young people feel un...

Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire   Happiness is big business, with sales of self-help books in the UK reaching record levels in the past year. Perhaps that’s because happiness is no longer the birthright of the elite. Just half a century ago, psychologist Warner Wilson seemed to suggest that you are less likely to be happy if you’re uneducated and poor when he stated that a happy person generally is “young, healthy, well educated, well paid, extroverted, optimistic, worry-free, religious, married, with high self-esteem, high job morale, modest aspirations, of either sex and of a wide range of intelligence”. Today happiness is something we can all aspire to. But, as many of us try out gratitude journals, meditation and positive affirmations, we often discover that they don’t make us substantially happier. The same often goes for reaching the goals that society values – such as marriage, an interesting job or physical fitness. So is happiness just a my...

Niia Nikolova, University of Strathclyde  The unexamined life is not worth living, said the Greek philosopher Socrates . He was reflecting on the expression “Know Thyself” – an aphorism inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi and one of the ultimate achievements in ancient Greece. While we walk around the world more or less successful in our endeavours, many of us sometimes have the nagging feeling that we don’t truly know ourselves. Why do we really feel and behave the way we do? While we have some ideas about who we are, our understanding of ourselves is often patchy and inconsistent. So, is self-knowledge something we should strive for, or are we better off living in blissful ignorance? Let’s examine the research. By self-knowledge , psychologists mean having an understanding of our feelings, motivations, thinking patterns and tendencies. These give us a stable sense of self-worth and a secure grip on our values and motivations. Without self-knowledge we...

Peter Howley, University of Leeds   For decades now, GDP has been the standard measure of a nation’s well-being. But it is becoming clear that an economic boost may not be accompanied by a rise in individual happiness. While there are many reasons for this, one important factor is that as nations become richer, environmental features such as green space and air quality often come under increasing threat. The mental health benefits of access to parks or waterfronts , for instance, have long been recognised but more recently researchers have also started to look at the role air pollution can play in our general mental health and happiness. With more tangible outcomes such as health, cognitive performance or labour productivity , the adverse effects of poor air are significant and well-established. The link to infant mortality and respiratory disease is well known, and the World Health Organisation estimates that around 7m deaths are attributable to air pollution each...

Iza Kavedžija, University of Exeter Happiness is the subject of countless quotations, slogans, self-help books and personal choices. It is also being taken seriously by national governments and organisations like the United Nations, as something societies should aim for. This political recognition makes a welcome change from long held obsessions with income and economic growth when it comes to choosing policies or measuring their success – but it is not without its faults. To begin with, how do you measure and compare national happiness levels? This is particularly challenging given that people have a tendency to inaccurately evaluate their emotional states or present themselves to others in a positive light. Different cultural understandings of happiness also make comparisons difficult. But understanding what makes life worthwhile in certain contexts – which may be different from happiness – can offer an alternative perspective on well-being. For example, even though ...

Jessica Pykett, University of Birmingham   Move over GDP: happiness is angling to become the metric of the future. Nation states have begun to compete in global happiness rankings and plan policy according to statistics of well-being. Most recently, New Zealand announced that its 2019 budget will report on how national spending impacts on well-being. City authorities are developing “smart” approaches to measuring happiness, mobilising an ever-increasing array of mobile apps and behavioural data that aim to sense, map and explain our daily happiness. For example, the Smart Dubai Office launched their Smart Happiness Index earlier in 2018, which promises to assess the performance of their city managers based on happiness gain per funds spent. This emphasis comes off the back of the academic field of happiness studies, which has emerged as a credible science – with its own research centres and academic journals – since the turn of the 21st century. A simple Google Scho...

Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire   Over the past two decades, the positive psychology movement has brightened up psychological research with its science of happiness, human potential and flourishing. It argues that psychologists should not only investigate mental illness but also what makes life worth living. The founding father of positive psychology, Martin Seligman , describes happiness as experiencing frequent positive emotions, such as joy, excitement and contentment, combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose. It implies a positive mindset in the present and an optimistic outlook for the future. Importantly, happiness experts have argued that happiness is not a stable, unchangeable trait but something flexible that we can work on and ultimately strive towards. I have been running happiness workshops for the last four years based on the evidence from the above field of psychology. The workshops are fun and I have earned a reputation a...

Lowri Dowthwaite, University of Central Lancashire   Who’s happier, men or women? Research shows it’s a complicated question and that asking whether males or females are happier isn’t really that helpful, because essentially, happiness is different for women and men . Women’s happiness has been declining for the past 30 years, according to recent statistics . And research shows that women are twice as likely to experience depression compared with men. Gender differences in depression are well established and studies have found that biological, psychological and social factors contribute to the disparity . But research also shows that women are more likely to experience intense positive emotions – such as joy and happiness – compared to men. So it seems that women’s more intense positive emotions balance out their higher risk of depression . Research also shows women are more likely to try and get help and access treatment – allowing them to also recover sooner . Ear...

In our modern days there are so many means of communication, and yet it seems that there are considerable difficulties in aligning ideas among nations,  people in general or in the families. Despite possessing so many tools for communication (smartphones, tablets, social media, e-mails) we still live far away from each other. The significant gap in our civilisations is that we are no longer able to listen to each other sincerely. If we fail to communicate, our energy genuinely is blocked internally, and this will make us sick. Our disease causes pains, and these pains are poured into the people who surround us.  If we want to be connected with others, we don't need to send them more posts on social media or similar, but we need to listen to them more. Listening with depth creates understanding. Understanding involves more connection among humans. To listen deeply we must learn to calm our inner noises, our thoughts. Sometimes a spiritual friend may be of great help in our ...