The new book by Richard Layard and co-author David Clark arrived in the post yesterday, [amazon_link id=”1846146054″ target=”_blank” ]Thrive: The Power of Evidence Based Psychological Therapies[/amazon_link]. It continues Professor Layard’s campaign for greater provision of mental health treatment – David Clark is a Professor of Psychology. The first half of the book covers the human and economic cost of mental illness, the second half is about which therapies are effective. I think I’m persuaded without reading it, but will do so to see whether it addresses the question of why governments so often treat mental health services as a low priority and what might change that.
A confession, though: the dog caught this one coming through the letter box and it has teeth marks right through it. I expect there was a lot of barking too – my apologies to the postman.
The dog ate my homework
and I had a bullet shot onto “the cultural animal” literally. lost my bag and the police shoot into it to make sure
I’m persuaded from my own personal experience that better treatment is needed, and the culture changed so people admit to themselves earlier that they might have a problem, rather than thinking they’re just going through a funny patch and they’ll pull through.
There are good utilitarian reasons for moving people from being depressed to merely content. And I’m sure I’ve read somewhere that happier people are more economically productive.