© 2008 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
What can the science of well-being tell the discipline of psychiatry – and why might psychiatry listen?
Phil Hanlon is Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow. His current research interests include ‘culture and health’, uses of integrated public health data and evaluation of complex public health interventions. Sandra Carlisle is a Research Fellow, also at the University of Glasgow (Public Health and Health Policy, Glasgow University, 1 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK. Email: s.carlisle{at}clinmed.gla.ac.uk). She has a PhD in community health sciences and an MSc in medical social anthropology, and has conducted a wide variety of policy-relevant research and evaluation studies. Current research interests include sociocultural approaches to understanding health, well-being and inequalities, and ethnographic and theory-focused methodologies applied to research and evaluation.
There is a field of knowledge that speaks of the promotion of positive mental health, well-being and happiness yet it may not be well-known to all psychiatric practitioners. Economists, geneticists, positive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists and sociocultural researchers have all contributed to what might be termed the emerging science of well-being. This article provides a brief introduction to this complex topic. We outline some of the findings, theories and arguments from this comparatively new but burgeoning research area. We also rehearse some critical responses to this field which indicate that both the evidence on well-being and the implications for practice and policy might be less straightforward than researchers sometimes imply. We conclude by suggesting that psychiatrists, as leaders in the field of mental health, might want to consider the implications (positive and negative) of well-being research for the development of their own discipline and professional practice.