Critical Mental Health Nurses' Network blog:
The Layard Report
23 January 2017
In December 2016 an electronic version of a new report became available, prior to its imminent publication in book form, by the London School of Economics. Dubbed ‘The Layard Report’ after key author Richard Layard, the actual title is The Origins of Happiness: How new science can transform our priorities. A title like that is about the boldest that could be imagined; one expects a treatise that brings together the biggest questions of philosophy from the past and present and the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, and all kinds of intriguing demographic research. This is, after all, a 200 page document, packed full with diagrams, graphs and illustrations. In essence, the report makes one central claim: That the government is wrong to focus on lifting people out of poverty. Instead, happiness would be more efficiently created by a focus on the treatment of depression and anxiety.
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Origins of happiness: Evidence and policy implications, Andrew Clark, Sarah Fleche, Richard Layard, Nattavudh Powdthavee and George Ward