Mental health policies

Blog

Radical (podcast):

What Is The Secret To Happiness? (Your Radical Questions with Lord Richard Layard)

For this week's Q&A, Amol is joined by the economist, author, Labour peer, and happiness champion Lord Richard Layard. In their previous conversation, Lord Layard outlined his radical idea; that government policymaking s...Read more...

Richard Layard and Amol Rajan

2 July 2026

Blog

Radical (podcast):

Happiness Rules: Should Wellbeing Dictate Government Policy?

This week, Amol sits down with Lord Richard Layard, the author, economist, and Labour peer who has spent decades making the case for happiness and wellbeing. He successfully helped implement talking therapy to the NHS, a...Read more...

Richard Layard and Amol Rajan

2 July 2026

CEP occasional paper

Structured wellbeing curriculum in schools

Some argue that school is a means to an end, and time spent in lessons may be unpleasant, but it helps these children in the future. The question is 'to what end'. Are school years something which have to be tolerated i...Read more...

Sara MacLennan

13 October 2025

CEP discussion paper

The value of a park in crises: quantifying the health and wellbeing benefits of green spaces using exogenous variations in use values

Most people consider parks important for their quality of life, yet systematic causal evidence is missing. We exploit exogenous variations in their use values to estimate causal effects. Using a representative household ...Read more...

Jan Goebel, Christian Krekel and Katrin Rehdanz

2 June 2025

External report

The goal of well-being and the United Nations Summit of the Future

How can we get the different sectors of society to collaborate to overcome the challenges we face? The answer has to be "Get them to address a common goal"....Read more...

Richard Layard

5 November 2024

External report

World Happiness Report 2024

This issue of the World Happiness Report focuses on the happiness of people at different stages of life. In the seven ages of man in Shakespeare's As You Like It, the later stages of life are portrayed as deeply depressi...Read more...

Edited by Lara Aknin, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Shun Wang

20 March 2024

Blog

LSE Business Review:

The three biggest workplace anxieties of 2023

What can leaders do to calm workplace anxieties and get the best out of their teams in 2024? Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Nikita, and Grace Lordan asked over 1,400 professionals about their top anxieties and share how ...Read more...

Jazzy Jasiulek, Daniel Jolles, Grace Lordan and Nikita

20 December 2023

Blog

LSE Impact:

Get Happier - podcasting made simple

Discussing the launch of his new podcast series 'Get Happier', Paul Dolan argues for the underrated power of checklists and mnemonics and shows how they can be applied through the medium of podcasting....Read more...

Paul Dolan

7 November 2023

External report

World Happiness Report 2023

It has been over ten years since the first World Happiness Report was published. And it is exactly ten years since the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 66/281, proclaiming 20 March to be observed annual...Read more...

Edited by Lara Aknin, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, John Helliwell, Richard Layard, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Shun Wang

20 March 2023

CentrePiece article

CEP Insights: Wellbeing

The CEP carries out policy-focused research on the causes of economic growth and effective ways to create a fair, inclusive and sustainable society. The Insights series highlights the contributions that CEP research has ...Read more...

21 February 2023

Blog

NHS England:

What's in a name? NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression - the new name for IAPT services

Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) services are being renamed as NHS Talking Therapies for Anxiety and Depression, following a public consultation. Professor David M Clark and Dr Adrian Whittington reflect ...Read more...

David M. Clark and Adrian Whittington

16 January 2023

Blog

The Work Goes On:

Richard Layard on his life in public service and his pioneering research on happiness (podcast)

Richard Layard joins Orley Ashenfelter on podcast 'The Work Goes On', to talk about his life in public service, his advocacy on behalf of the unemployed, and his pioneering research on happiness, life satisfaction, and m...Read more...

Orley Ashenfelter and Richard Layard

8 January 2023

Chapter

Wellbeing as the goal of policy

in Wellbeing: Alternative policy perspectives

When policy-makers have multiple objectives, they still need an over-arching criterion which determines the importance of the different objectives. The most reasonable criterion is the wellbeing of the population. Fortun...Read more...

Richard Layard

30 August 2022

CentrePiece article

Lessons from ten years of the World Happiness Report

The World Happiness Report gives us an annual insight into global wellbeing. Maria Cotofan looks at what we have learned about the determinants of wellbeing in the past ten years ? and what challenges and opportunities l...Read more...

Maria Cotofan

21 June 2022

CEP Insights

Wellbeing

As societies become richer, they do not become happier. This paradox has led to a growing interest in the science of wellbeing, and how policymakers can evaluate policies in terms of what will improve wellbeing. Economis...Read more...

Richard Layard

14 March 2022

External report

World Happiness Report 2020

The World Happiness Report is a landmark survey of the state of global happiness that ranks 156 countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be. The World Happiness Report 2020 for the first time ranks ci...Read more...

Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey D. Sachs

20 May 2020

CEP discussion paper

Covid-19, lockdowns and well-being: evidence from Google trends

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many governments to implement lockdowns. While lockdowns may help to contain the spread of the virus, they may result in substantial damage to population well-being. We use Google Trends dat...Read more...

Abel Brodeur, Andrew E. Clark, Sarah Fleche and Nattavudh Powdthavee

19 May 2020

Journal article

Kyklos:

Do more of those in misery suffer from poverty, unemployment or mental illness?

Studies of deprivation usually ignore mental illness. This paper uses household panel data from the USA, Australia, Britain and Germany to broaden the analysis. We ask first how many of those in the lowest levels of life...Read more...

Sarah Fleche and Richard Layard

1 February 2017

CentrePiece article

Misery and mental health

Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Fleche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of mi...Read more...

Sarah Fleche and Richard Layard

22 February 2016

CEP election analysis

A New Priority for Mental Health

Mental illness (especially depression and chronic anxiety) is the biggest single cause of misery in advanced countries. But only one quarter of those who are ill receive treatment. Mental health is crucial for wellbeing ...Read more...

Richard Layard

1 May 2015

Book

Thrive
The power of evidence-based psychological therapies

Read more...

Richard Layard and David M. Clark

1 July 2014

CEP discussion paper

Mental illness and unhappiness

This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points: 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if men...Read more...

Dan Chisholm, Richard Layard, Vikram Patel and Shekhar Saxena

16 September 2013

CEP discussion paper

Enhancing recovery rates: lessons from year one of the English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme

Background: The English Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative aims to make evidence-based psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorder more widely available in the National Health S...Read more...

David M. Clark, Alex Gyani, Richard Layard and Roz Shafran

4 July 2013

CEP discussion paper

Mental health: the new frontier for labour economics

This lecture argues that mental health is a major factor of production. It is the biggest single influence on life satisfaction, with mental health eight years earlier a more powerful explanatory factor than current inco...Read more...

Richard Layard

10 May 2013

CEP report

How mental illness loses out in the NHS a report by the Centre for Economic Performance's Mental Health Policy Group

Mental illness accounts for a massive share of the total burden of disease. Even when we include the burden of premature death mental illness accounts for 23% of the total burden of disease. Yet, despite the existence of...Read more...

Richard Layard

18 June 2012