Misery and mental health

Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard

CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Mental illness is a far bigger source of human misery than poverty or unemployment, according to research by Sarah Flèche and Richard Layard. They argue that we need to move beyond a purely materialistic conception of misery - and call for increased public spending on mental health. Their study finds that dissatisfaction with life can have many causes - but mental illness is the most important. If people cannot enjoy life, they are just as deprived whether the cause is outside themselves or within.

Keywords: Mental health; life-satisfaction; wellbeing; poverty; unemployment; Community Wellbeing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I3 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap and nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepcnp:466

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