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. . . and looking ahead to WHR 2026 . . .
Prof Lord Richard Layard
Editor, World Happiness Report
In World Happiness Report 2024, we presented evidence of a concerning decline in the wellbeing of young people in Western industrialised countries.
Obviously, a child’s wellbeing matters for the same reason that any individual’s wellbeing matters. But wellbeing among children and adolescents is also critical since it is the best predictor of how happy said child will be in their subsequent life – with a higher predictive power than the qualifications which they might obtain.
There has been much debate about the reasons for such a downward trend, with many competing theories and policy recommendations. However, one explanation has captured public and political attention more than any other: social media.
Also in 2024, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, published The Anxious Generation, arguing that the decline in youth wellbeing is driven by a transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood. The book has been a best-seller and sparked heated debate, both in academia and the wider world.
As editors of the World Happiness Report, we have followed this debate closely, concerned that rigorous science was being overshadowed by shallow media narratives.
In World Happiness Report 2026, we see an opportunity to bring all sides of the debate together to establish the facts, clarify disagreements, and provide decision-makers with a balanced assessment of what we know, what we don’t know, and what should be done.
We’re encouraging researchers from across the world to submit chapter proposals focusing on the relationship between social media and subjective wellbeing before the deadline of Sunday 15 June. Full details are available on the World Happiness Report website.
The INDIVIDUAL - GROUP axis continues to fascinate:
SELF - IDENTITY - PERSONHOOD ego superego id mood - depression - mania psychoactive substances ego death - reset, reconstitition, re-birth? | NATURE personhood - rivers, mountains, trees, land medicine(s) psychedelics |
cultural identity, knowledge social history, practices | corporate personhood law 'person' |
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| Visual Methodologies |
"It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world; they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures." [Barthes 1982: 5-6] p.121."The referent is there in photographic images in ways it is not in other sorts of visual imagery, Barthes argues. And a result, he suggests that photographs can be interpreted in two ways. First, there is a level of the studium, which is a culturally informed reading of the image, one that interprets the signs of the photographs. But he says that some photographs produce a different response, which is a second kind of reading, by containing what he called a punctum. A punctum is unintentional and ungeneralisable; it is a sensitive point in an image which pricks, bruises, disturbs a particular viewer out of their usual viewing habits. And he went so far as to suggest that 'while the studium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not [Barthes 1982: 51]. That is, there are points in some photographs that escape signifiers and shock the viewer with their 'intractable reality' [Barthes 1982: 119]. And while shock is something that most adverts aim to achieve, it is the case that recent advertising is relying more and more, not only on the transfer of meaning between signs, but on the evocation of a feeling or a mood attached to a brand that is difficult to analyse using semiological terminology." p.122.
On twitter* @h2cm over the years I've noted a certain stance, an aversion even, to generalist approaches in nursing (as suggested apparently by Hodges' model). The simplicity of Hodges' model in its template (basic) form belies how the model can address both generalist and specialist practice and theory. Bluntly: choose your domain; slice, dice and drill as you wish.
Rose's reference to Barthes, in-particular studium and punctum stands out. We can equate the former with the situation as found, the clues provided in the referral details, the initial cues, data and information gleaned upon assessment. What might be expected, so to speak, including assumptions.
But the punctum, may be described - interpreted in person-centred (yet professionally balanced) terms. Especially in assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation. The punctum signifies salience: what is important to this person. If the academic emphasis is upon ‘reflection in action’, ‘reflection on action’, ‘single loop learning’ and ‘double loop learning’ (Schön, 1987), can the punctum represent empathy, rapport, the sustenance of dignity and respect, an individual's sense-making?Our photograph, taken through Hodges' model is comprised of four frames. The photograph is compound, and with several exposures it can be animated.^ When played, it reveals a hint, a fraction, an interval in an individual's (potential) health career. A light upon the several-fold determinants of health and their influence and impact upon life chances experienced and exercised to date - and to follow (climate change).
Rose, G. (2012). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (3rd ed.). London: Sage. PB. [Now in 5th edition.] Image - Amazon.
Schön , D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossy Bass.
*Yes, I know.
^The Producer - Director depends on your Spiritual stance.
Rose (2012) now with student nurses [on placement from Chester University].
Temper the Wound | Wound |
Wound |
BBC Radio 3: J to Z International Women’s Day Special
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| Poetry in [not in] motion |
“Hannah Hodgson takes us to the paradoxical heart of poetry itself: to be held inside a pain both intensified and soothed by the sheer brilliant presence of the poet’s mind.” – Caroline Bird
Hannah Hodgon is an award-winning poet and a palliative care patient. In her compelling debut collection 163 Days, she uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness.
163 Days is the length of Hannah’s longest period of hospitalisation to date. In this long poem, she probes various truths, personal and medical; truths which clash like a tray of dropped instruments in a silent operating theatre.
The speaker is a teenager on the cusp of adulthood. Doctors struggle to diagnose her complex conditions. Through daily, diary-like poems we see the children’s ward through Hannah’s eyes. It is decked out in primary colours. Volunteer clowns visit. At seventeen she is ‘too old’ to be here, ‘too young’ to move to the adult ward.
The mundanity of hospital life is marbled by a changing landscape of mood, hope and loss. Her symptoms are painful. She has numerous tests and procedures to keep her alive long enough to figure out what’s wrong. A gap yawns between the person she is, and the person in her medical notes.
In ‘Aftercare’, Hannah navigates the worlds of both nightclubs and hospice care as she embarks on a new version of her life as a disabled adult. 163 Days is an important collection, in which Hodgson’s true voice takes poetry into difficult places.
Listen to the BBC radio play adaptation of 163 Days on the New Creatives website here.
My source:
Hannah's book in Kirkby Lonsdale, The Book Lounge 17th February 2023.
INDIVIDUAL
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"David Robertson’s immersive print installation explores the stigma around mental health and the difficulties men have in reaching out for help. Consisting of 25 life-sized men, the figure is a self-portrait but is representative of any man. Formed of tally marks, each mark representing an individual." ...
[my emphasis].
The Holburne Museum:
https://www.holburne.org/events/holburne-open-david-robertson/
Image: With thanks to David Robertson
David Robertson
www.davidrobertsonprintmaker.com
QEST Scholar
Instagram.com/multiple_of_one
My source: Printmaking Today Summer 2022, 31:122, p.7.
https://www.cellopress.co.uk/page/printmaking-today
"The ‘What Lies Behind’ exhibition, a recent display in Newlyn Art Gallery, saw 10 patients from Morrab Surgery in Penzance select works of art from Arts Council national collection of more than 8,000 pieces.
The group were asked to choose pieces that reflected their personal response to the pandemic. The works on display included textiles, sculpture, prints and paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Chila Burman.
The project came about during lockdown after Morrab Surgery’s social prescribing link worker Ellie Moseley realised that many of the patients in the practice that she was working with had an interest in the arts." [ On GPonline ].
| Personal expectations (care, medicine...) Emotional wellbeing Person-centred care Social prescribing as a care intervention |
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| Social prescribing as a care policy needs community resources (to match). Amid health policy calls for innovation and sustainable healthcare systems and services; the community remains the sustainable resource (if not neglected). Funding - ... ££ $$ €€ ¥¥ ฿฿ ₫₫ ₴₴ ₪₪ ₽₽ ₹₹ ₩₩ ... local :: global health. |
My source: @ActivateEurope
https://twitter.com/ActivateEurope/status/1491751271539351562?s=20&t=ZQHyHs2a9--xJpmJDzrdHQ
@GPonlinenews
| Painting as Process process as painting | ||
| Painting Process | ||
peer (painting) | peer supervision |
"... [Lucian Freud's] most precious works are perhaps his unfinished portraits. ... The two painters [Francis Bacon] often used each other as models preferring to depict each other’s psychological states rather than physical. ...
Then there is the unfinished self-portrait from around 1956. (Image #4 in the slideshow) These paintings should be looked at as precious gifts that offer an unprecedented access to Freud’s very personal process. Notice how his loose pencil marks, more like broad guidelines for the final portrait gain volume and become imbued with emotion at the hand of the master. You can see that Freud started each portrait with the most expressive feature of the human face – the eyes, and moved radially outwards from there."
See also:With my emphasis and image source:
http://www.galleryintell.com/lucian-freud-portraits-kunsthistorisches-museum/
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PROCESSes
23 June 2016 data = 'evidence'*
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| SOCIETY THE high STREET (Let's call it -) PREPARATION ? folks- MUSIC -onomy | "permanent sickie" Civil Service / Servant BREXIT AUSTERITY BRIT AIN ENG LAND FR EN CH "state-of-the-nation" |
AffecTech Design Workshop: Discussion on Cross-disciplinary Methods for Depression Treatment: https://t.co/7xVinrvmWf #wearables #tech #innovation #research #digitalhealth #mentalhealth #depression— AffecTech (@Affec_Tech) February 16, 2018
Unreachable hope Pain
Weight - burdened
Immobility - motivation
DEPRESSION Anxiety
DESPERATION Stuck
Darkness Grief Falling
Insomnia
Negative filter No hope
Nowhere
Negative spiral Lack of
interest and motivation
Internalising rage Suppressed emotions
Anger Not being listened to Darkness |
Pain
Im-mobility
Physical decline Weight
Stuck
Chained/Locked
to go
energy
imprisonment
Darkness
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Imprisonment – Social Isolation
No support
Hiding
Loneliness
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Imprisonment – Powerlessness?
Loss of control |
| Identified, general state of lack of interest as a main symptom of depression (lack of energy, negative spiral), and as one of the obstacles for technology-based treatment of it. Therapist input: the emotion regulation component of the system should be suggestion-based (promoting novelty in the patient daily routine). system should be able to continuously monitor* (and predict) the user mood should have an appealing and trust-worthy interface from which it can communicate with the user and modifying his/her immediate context. If depressed - the agent engages the user in a discussion in which a range of emotion regulation techniques is proposed to him/her. Includes: (i) modifying environment (light changes, playing music); (ii) recommending activities; (iii) proposing mindfulness exercises; (iv) engaging the user in a discussion; or (v) recommending the user to look for the support of a friend. Further, at the end of each day the user and the agent discuss progress made over recent days, and define small steps that could be taken in the near future. | Requirement for a pro-active intervention system, and engage the user as soon as (or better just a bit before) a critical situation is detected. System should: *real time - 'always on'? provide daily feed-back to the user (giving a sense of incrementally overcoming problems). Low-fidelity prototype of a system that meet these requirements. Composed of two components: (i) wrist-band device worn by the user that monitors the user mood; and (ii) an assistive agent that is responsible for the emotion regulation system component. Working principle of system - wrist-band devices communicates to the agent when the user is in a depressed mood (- use of biosensors) |
Should strive to connect the user with his/her close friends.
Emotion regulation techniques - (v) recommending the user to look for the support of a friend (see above).
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Purpose
(One of the 4P's in Hodges' model)
Joy
Satisfaction
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Quality of Life -
4 All?
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"Writing three decades ago about Austrian literature, the German author WG Sebald made a case for melancholia as a form of resistance. It was tempting, he said in Die Beschreibung des Unglücks (“The Description of Disaster”), to see the drive to describe misery as reactionary. But in fact, it could be much more productive and radical: “Melancholia, the contemplation of the dismal plight we are in, has nothing in common with the desire to die . . . Describing the dismal plight we face contains the possibility of overcoming it.” |
Mental health research 3% Quarter of all health costs | Medical Research... |
| 2011-2014 33% rise in mental health related incidents dealt with by the police | Council.. £801.4 million for projects - mental health allocated £21.8 million Funding also via other bodies - National Inst. for Health Research |
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| Brian E. Hodges - c/o Brian's family. |
Born in Liverpool, UK.
Community Mental Health Nurse NHS, Part-time Lecturer,
Researcher Nursing & Technology Enhanced Learning
Registered Nurse - Mental Health & General
Community Psychiatric Nursing (Cert.) MMU
PG Cert. Ed.
BA(Joint Hons.) Computing and Philosophy - BIHE - Bolton
PG(Dip.) Collaboration on Psychosocial Education [COPE] Univ. Man.
MRES. e-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning, Lancaster Univ.
Live and work in NW England - seeking a global perspective.
The views expressed on W2tQ are entirely my own, unless stated otherwise.
Comments are disabled.
If you would like to get in touch please e-mail me at
h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk
orcid.org/0000-0002-0192-8965
