Who doesn’t want to be happy? The last few decades have seen a great rise in the pursuit of happiness. Not the Aristotelian pursuit of a virtuous, well rounded emotional life, nor the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness through liberty as an ‘inalienable right’, nor even the Utilitarian pursuit of happiness as the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’. Rather, there has been a surge of interest in measuring and planning for the happiness of nations. The OECD now tracks wellbeing measures across countries, Bhutan has pioneered in interest in Gross National Happiness (GNH) over GDP as a measure of societal progress, and the UK is interested in findings ‘happy places’ by measuring wellbeing and happiness by geographic location. Happiness is clearly now an important measure of social progress.

And yet happiness is still largely individualised as an emotion. Despite studies by world happiness experts like Ruut Veenhoven showing that happiness is clearly linked to social structural conditions in that it varies substantially across rich, poor and unequal nations, the treatments for happiness are still largely individualised. Medication and therapy – including mass therapy, or a societal/national foci on promoting mindfulness, positive psychology and CBT – are put forward as the means for resolving unhappiness, even when changes in economic and work conditions, family, gender, ethnic, and age structures, and urban and social connection may be the primary culprits in causing unhappiness. Can the proliferation of lists on how to be happy in 5, 7, 13, or 25 ‘science-backed’ easy (and obviously non-contradictory …) steps really compensate for broader social change?

How much does our happiness – in all its related emotional forms – depend on what we are doing, rather than how we might sum up our lives on a 0 to 10 scale of satisfaction? In previous research, my colleague Kimberly Fisher and I found (unexpectedly) that Americans would enjoy their time less if they lived like Australians, because they would spend more time doing unpleasant things like housework, and less time doing fun things like having people over for dinner. We also found that the GFC seemed to have the effect of helping Americans re-evaluate the quality of their time, and enjoy the grind of work less and the pleasantness of social and family time more.

And what about other emotions? How much of our unhappiness is about rising anxiety, depression, stress and anger? How much of our happiness depends on peace, contentment and love? What about room for the future – optimism – and for other people – empathy?

Clearly, reflecting on and adjusting the social circumstances and lives that make us happy is an important element on our actual happiness. Mary Holmes calls this emotional reflexivity, or “an embodied, cognitive and relational process in which social actors have feelings about and try to understand and alter their lives in relation to their social and natural environment and to others.”

I say – as I always do with regards to all matters sociological – that structure and agency go hand in hand in the consideration of our happiness. We can change the world – and we can change ourselves – one emotion at a time, with reflection and awareness. I say that we need to be reflexive about what makes us happy (how society affects us), what makes others happy (how we affect society), if there are contradictions and inequalities in happiness, and when it is appropriate to be, show, or change our happiness, unhappiness, or other emotions – rather than assuming we should always try and be simply happy as a default for living. If we can do these things, I think we can start to really understand what it means to be happy in today’s society, and to understand and build truly happy societies.

What do you think?

#S344UOW20 #Tut9 #Fri1230

Who doesn’t want to be happy? The last few decades have seen a great rise in the pursuit of happiness. Not the Aristotelian pursuit of a virtuous, well rounded emotional life, nor the Jeffersonian pursuit of happiness through liberty as an ‘inalienable right’, nor even the Utilitarian pursuit of happiness as the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’. Rather, there has been a surge of interest in measuring and planning for the happiness of nations. The OECD now tracks wellbeing measures across countries, Bhutan has pioneered in interest in Gross National Happiness (GNH) over GDP as a measure of societal progress, and the UK is interested in findings ‘happy places’ by measuring wellbeing and happiness by geographic location. Happiness is clearly now an important measure of social progress.

And yet happiness is still largely individualised as an emotion. Despite studies by world happiness experts like Ruut Veenhoven showing that happiness is clearly linked to social structural conditions in that it varies substantially across rich, poor and unequal nations, the treatments for happiness are still largely individualised. Medication and therapy – including mass therapy, or a societal/national foci on promoting mindfulness, positive psychology and CBT – are put forward as the means for resolving unhappiness, even when changes in economic and work conditions, family, gender, ethnic, and age structures, and urban and social connection may be the primary culprits in causing unhappiness. Can the proliferation of lists on how to be happy in 5, 7, 13, or 25 ‘science-backed’ easy (and obviously non-contradictory …) steps really compensate for broader social change?

How much does our happiness – in all its related emotional forms – depend on what we are doing, rather than how we might sum up our lives on a 0 to 10 scale of satisfaction? In previous research, my colleague Kimberly Fisher and I found (unexpectedly) that Americans would enjoy their time less if they lived like Australians, because they would spend more time doing unpleasant things like housework, and less time doing fun things like having people over for dinner. We also found that the GFC seemed to have the effect of helping Americans re-evaluate the quality of their time, and enjoy the grind of work less and the pleasantness of social and family time more.

And what about other emotions? How much of our unhappiness is about rising anxiety, depression, stress and anger? How much of our happiness depends on peace, contentment and love? What about room for the future – optimism – and for other people – empathy?

Clearly, reflecting on and adjusting the social circumstances and lives that make us happy is an important element on our actual happiness. Mary Holmes calls this emotional reflexivity, or “an embodied, cognitive and relational process in which social actors have feelings about and try to understand and alter their lives in relation to their social and natural environment and to others.”

I say – as I always do with regards to all matters sociological – that structure and agency go hand in hand in the consideration of our happiness. We can change the world – and we can change ourselves – one emotion at a time, with reflection and awareness. I say that we need to be reflexive about what makes us happy (how society affects us), what makes others happy (how we affect society), if there are contradictions and inequalities in happiness, and when it is appropriate to be, show, or change our happiness, unhappiness, or other emotions – rather than assuming we should always try and be simply happy as a default for living. If we can do these things, I think we can start to really understand what it means to be happy in today’s society, and to understand and build truly happy societies.

What do you think?

#S344UOW20 #Tut9 #Mon1230

Shame is commonplace in everyday life and politics. Thomas Scheff calls shame ‘the master emotion’, though notes its discussion is often taboo in western countries. He argues that when directed towards ourselves, shame can help us alleviate anxieties through information-seeking and risk avoidance. In these circumstances, when internalised, it resembles (and possibly transforms into) guilt, encouraging sympathy, helpfulness, and attempts to correct (one’s own) bad behaviour. Shame can, however, be highly damaging if internally directed at our core-identity; our sense of who we are rather than what we do, and the source of our self-esteem. When shames turns us against ourselves, it can destroy confidence, lead to depression, create dissonance, and manifest in deviant acts; simple thrills and joys in doing anti-social or wrong things – what Jack Katz calls the ‘seductions of crime’ – that denote an inauthenticity in the way we relate to the people around us.

Trying to avoid this harmful internalisation, we often externalise our shame – blame it on someone else – particularly when that another person or group is perceived to be attacking our core identity. When this happens, shame turns into anger. This might include relatively small, nasty incidents, such as online trolling and cyber-attacks. However, it can also include mass gatherings and political channelling of shame and anger. Such events took place over ten years ago in Australia in the form of the Cronulla Riots, which as Ghassan Hage has argued was a representation of the shame and fear experienced by angry rioters who had their core identities – their conventional white masculine dominance – challenged by job loss from globalization. Hage’s analysis was more political than empirical however; he did not talk to the rioters themselves to gauge their opinions, perceptions, motivations, and – importantly – their feelings.

More recently, shame and anger have manifested in American politics with the rise of Donald Trump, and have been subject to more intense analysis. Arlie Hochschild undertook extensive fieldwork with members of the Tea Party to get a sense of their ‘deep story’ about why they were drawn to vote for Trump, and brings back a more complicated, nuanced picture. She describes their narrative: they see themselves ‘waiting patiently in line’; working hard, being good Christians, not wishing ill of others, but aspiring to lead a slowly improving better life; better than their parents, better for their kids. However – their narrative continues – they are being undermined by others who cut ahead them in the line without working for it, who are supported by the government to do so (on their tax dollars!), who turn them into strangers in their own land, and who insult them with labels like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ if they try to point out the injustice of it all.

They therefore turn to someone like Trump because he recognizes and taps into their feelings – of thwarted aspiration, relative decline, being ignored and unsupported, and having these feelings unrecognised and suppressed – and he seeks to overturn liberal feeling rules. She notes how Trump sets himself up as moral guardian and Judge, dividing everything into good and bad, and then judging ‘bad people’ harshly; workers (on the Apprentice), models, journalists, migrants, etc. He demands continual recognition of himself and his achievements, and this appeals to white workers who identify with him and also want to achieve and feel recognized.

I would argue that this is manifestation of multiple forms of shame – shame at their worsening condition, the feeling of being shamed by an uncaring, tax-grabbing government, and the feeling of being shamed by politically correct liberals and the government when they point out how this is unfair – and their subsequent anger is well-tapped by Trump to feed right-wing politics. The question is: what should be the response of the left? Should it take the fight to Trump, and continue to entrench the partisan divisions wedded firmly to identity politics? Should it allow itself to be painted as anti-nation (and pro-global), anti-aspirational (and pro-disadvantaged), and anti ‘straight white male’ (and pro everyone else)? Or should it seek an alternate path, looking for compromise, inclusiveness and hope … and empathy?

#S344UOW20 #Tut8 #Fri1230

Shame is commonplace in everyday life and politics. Thomas Scheff calls shame ‘the master emotion’, though notes its discussion is often taboo in western countries. He argues that when directed towards ourselves, shame can help us alleviate anxieties through information-seeking and risk avoidance. In these circumstances, when internalised, it resembles (and possibly transforms into) guilt, encouraging sympathy, helpfulness, and attempts to correct (one’s own) bad behaviour. Shame can, however, be highly damaging if internally directed at our core-identity; our sense of who we are rather than what we do, and the source of our self-esteem. When shames turns us against ourselves, it can destroy confidence, lead to depression, create dissonance, and manifest in deviant acts; simple thrills and joys in doing anti-social or wrong things – what Jack Katz calls the ‘seductions of crime’ – that denote an inauthenticity in the way we relate to the people around us.

Trying to avoid this harmful internalisation, we often externalise our shame – blame it on someone else – particularly when that another person or group is perceived to be attacking our core identity. When this happens, shame turns into anger. This might include relatively small, nasty incidents, such as online trolling and cyber-attacks. However, it can also include mass gatherings and political channelling of shame and anger. Such events took place over ten years ago in Australia in the form of the Cronulla Riots, which as Ghassan Hage has argued was a representation of the shame and fear experienced by angry rioters who had their core identities – their conventional white masculine dominance – challenged by job loss from globalization. Hage’s analysis was more political than empirical however; he did not talk to the rioters themselves to gauge their opinions, perceptions, motivations, and – importantly – their feelings.

More recently, shame and anger have manifested in American politics with the rise of Donald Trump, and have been subject to more intense analysis. Arlie Hochschild undertook extensive fieldwork with members of the Tea Party to get a sense of their ‘deep story’ about why they were drawn to vote for Trump, and brings back a more complicated, nuanced picture. She describes their narrative: they see themselves ‘waiting patiently in line’; working hard, being good Christians, not wishing ill of others, but aspiring to lead a slowly improving better life; better than their parents, better for their kids. However – their narrative continues – they are being undermined by others who cut ahead them in the line without working for it, who are supported by the government to do so (on their tax dollars!), who turn them into strangers in their own land, and who insult them with labels like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ if they try to point out the injustice of it all.

They therefore turn to someone like Trump because he recognizes and taps into their feelings – of thwarted aspiration, relative decline, being ignored and unsupported, and having these feelings unrecognised and suppressed – and he seeks to overturn liberal feeling rules. She notes how Trump sets himself up as moral guardian and Judge, dividing everything into good and bad, and then judging ‘bad people’ harshly; workers (on the Apprentice), models, journalists, migrants, etc. He demands continual recognition of himself and his achievements, and this appeals to white workers who identify with him and also want to achieve and feel recognized.

I would argue that this is manifestation of multiple forms of shame – shame at their worsening condition, the feeling of being shamed by an uncaring, tax-grabbing government, and the feeling of being shamed by politically correct liberals and the government when they point out how this is unfair – and their subsequent anger is well-tapped by Trump to feed right-wing politics. The question is: what should be the response of the left? Should it take the fight to Trump, and continue to entrench the partisan divisions wedded firmly to identity politics? Should it allow itself to be painted as anti-nation (and pro-global), anti-aspirational (and pro-disadvantaged), and anti ‘straight white male’ (and pro everyone else)? Or should it seek an alternate path, looking for compromise, inclusiveness and hope … and empathy?

#S344UOW20 #Tut8 #Mon1230

Have you ever wanted to change how you look? Not just in terms of how you dress, but how you might alter your body? Some of us undertake cosmetic surgery in order look different: younger, slimmer, tighter, bigger, weirder, more radical, more normal, less normal, a different look, a different gender.

There are many motivations for these changes. Some want to alter their bodies to feel ‘more like the person they were always meant to be’, as an expression of individuality, authenticity, and identity. This is particularly true in the case of transgender persons, though it applies to many others. A lot of people exercise and work out to make their bodies look and feel healthier, and some argue that tattoos and piercings help people express difficult individual feelings in a uniquely public way. ‘Authenticity’ is a powerful motivator.

However, the drive for change to become an ‘authentic’ self is sometimes driven by a desire to look like someone else that we admire; a friend, a celebrity, or an influencer. Admiration is an important emotional motivation, denoting comparison, identification and appreciation of another’s qualities. However, other comparison-based emotions – anxiety and envy – are also extremely relevant. Many of us feel pressure and anxiety, not just to fit in and look ‘good enough’, but to look better than others and gain status. Gordon Clanton argues that if you find yourselves “thinking the other does not deserve their good fortune or wishing that the other would lose his or her advantage or otherwise suffer, that is a measure of your envy”. Have you ever thought that someone you know has it too easy because they are just lucky enough to just be good-looking? If you told them so, would they agree, would they tell you off for being ‘too envious,’ or would they encourage you to ‘embrace your envy,’ and work harder to look better?

Sometimes the anxious push and competition to look and act ‘better’ is not driven by status, but by the need to work. As more jobs orient towards customer service, it’s not only necessary to constantly manage feelings at work – to always smile and look happy – but to really look the part – dress up, dress down, dress different, dress sexy. Paul Thompson and colleagues describe how companies hire workers who embody the ‘right’ qualities to sell their products; looks, style, mannerisms, emotional expressions, even the right voice in the case of call centre operators. They call this ‘aesthetic labour’, or the ‘supply of embodied capacities and attributes possessed by workers at the point of entry into employment’ (p931). Companies increasingly prioritise aesthetic labour in recruitment, and value and demand its constant development and use on the job to sell products and promote the company’s brand. Employees in Thompson’s study report being subject to the ‘grooming standards committee’ and ‘uniform police’, intent on regulating appearance and speech, through disciplinary action if necessary, to meet the employer’s aesthetic standards. Such aesthetic labour demands are now intensified by the widespread use of customer satisfaction ratings, particularly to allocate (more, better-quality) work in gig-industries like Uber and Task Rabbit; a grumpy day could cost you your job!

This commercialisation of bodies and emotional labour is also part of a broader phenomenon of commodification of emotions in digital economies. Jan Padios calls this ‘emotional extraction’, which includes emotional labour, but also predicting “everything from consumer choices to criminal activity” from the capture, use and sale of any “information and data that can be mined as a result of isolating and examining people’s emotions or affect” (p207). Our emotional data – our likes, our preferences, and (yes) our customer satisfaction ratings – are now products we give away (for free) to super-profitable behemoths (Facebook, Amazon, Google etc).

Body modification and emotional comportment is anything but a simple, individualised choice. They are highly social and emotional, bringing us the joy of authenticity, but also the thrill of elevated social status (and the relief of lesser envy). They are conflated with status; are tightly wound up with media images and the body-industry; are intrinsic to the aesthetic labour of the service economy; and engender emotions that become commodities for extraction in the wider digital economy.

Perhaps it is time their value was recognised and paid for?

#S344UOW20 #Tut7 #Fri1230

Have you ever wanted to change how you look? Not just in terms of how you dress, but how you might alter your body? Some of us undertake cosmetic surgery in order look different: younger, slimmer, tighter, bigger, weirder, more radical, more normal, less normal, a different look, a different gender.

There are many motivations for these changes. Some want to alter their bodies to feel ‘more like the person they were always meant to be’, as an expression of individuality, authenticity, and identity. This is particularly true in the case of transgender persons, though it applies to many others. A lot of people exercise and work out to make their bodies look and feel healthier, and some argue that tattoos and piercings help people express difficult individual feelings in a uniquely public way. ‘Authenticity’ is a powerful motivator.

However, the drive for change to become an ‘authentic’ self is sometimes driven by a desire to look like someone else that we admire; a friend, a celebrity, or an influencer. Admiration is an important emotional motivation, denoting comparison, identification and appreciation of another’s qualities. However, other comparison-based emotions – anxiety and envy – are also extremely relevant. Many of us feel pressure and anxiety, not just to fit in and look ‘good enough’, but to look better than others and gain status. Gordon Clanton argues that if you find yourselves “thinking the other does not deserve their good fortune or wishing that the other would lose his or her advantage or otherwise suffer, that is a measure of your envy”. Have you ever thought that someone you know has it too easy because they are just lucky enough to just be good-looking? If you told them so, would they agree, would they tell you off for being ‘too envious,’ or would they encourage you to ‘embrace your envy,’ and work harder to look better?

Sometimes the anxious push and competition to look and act ‘better’ is not driven by status, but by the need to work. As more jobs orient towards customer service, it’s not only necessary to constantly manage feelings at work – to always smile and look happy – but to really look the part – dress up, dress down, dress different, dress sexy. Paul Thompson and colleagues describe how companies hire workers who embody the ‘right’ qualities to sell their products; looks, style, mannerisms, emotional expressions, even the right voice in the case of call centre operators. They call this ‘aesthetic labour’, or the ‘supply of embodied capacities and attributes possessed by workers at the point of entry into employment’ (p931). Companies increasingly prioritise aesthetic labour in recruitment, and value and demand its constant development and use on the job to sell products and promote the company’s brand. Employees in Thompson’s study report being subject to the ‘grooming standards committee’ and ‘uniform police’, intent on regulating appearance and speech, through disciplinary action if necessary, to meet the employer’s aesthetic standards. Such aesthetic labour demands are now intensified by the widespread use of customer satisfaction ratings, particularly to allocate (more, better-quality) work in gig-industries like Uber and Task Rabbit; a grumpy day could cost you your job!

This commercialisation of bodies and emotional labour is also part of a broader phenomenon of commodification of emotions in digital economies. Jan Padios calls this ‘emotional extraction’, which includes emotional labour, but also predicting “everything from consumer choices to criminal activity” from the capture, use and sale of any “information and data that can be mined as a result of isolating and examining people’s emotions or affect” (p207). Our emotional data – our likes, our preferences, and (yes) our customer satisfaction ratings – are now products we give away (for free) to super-profitable behemoths (Facebook, Amazon, Google etc).

Body modification and emotional comportment is anything but a simple, individualised choice. They are highly social and emotional, bringing us the joy of authenticity, but also the thrill of elevated social status (and the relief of lesser envy). They are conflated with status; are tightly wound up with media images and the body-industry; are intrinsic to the aesthetic labour of the service economy; and engender emotions that become commodities for extraction in the wider digital economy.

Perhaps it is time their value was recognised and paid for?

#S344UOW20 #Tut7 #Mon1230

We all know what its like to feel the wrong thing at the wrong time. Boredom when you’re meant to be interested (or at least look interested) in that lecture, anxiety when you’re meant to be happy with friends, tiredness when you’re playing with children, and frustration and stress at work. We all know what it means to feel the wrong thing, and then have to pretend – or display – a different feeling, or even somehow make ourselves feel something altogether different. We call this ‘emotion management.’

But how do we manage our emotions? When should we manage them? Should we always try to think happy thoughts – is sadness just bad and troublesome? Or are there social rules about how and when we should do this? Arlie Hochschild suggests that society has ‘feeling rules’ about how we are allowed to feel in given situations – particularly at work – and that these rules impact differently on men and women, with women still doing the bulk of the ‘emotional labour’ involved in care jobs in most countries.

Do you manage your emotions most of the time at work? Or in other areas of life? Does your gender affect this?

#S344UOW20 #Tut6 #Fri1230

We all know what its like to feel the wrong thing at the wrong time. Boredom when you’re meant to be interested (or at least look interested) in that lecture, anxiety when you’re meant to be happy with friends, tiredness when you’re playing with children, and frustration and stress at work. We all know what it means to feel the wrong thing, and then have to pretend – or display – a different feeling, or even somehow make ourselves feel something altogether different. We call this ‘emotion management.’

But how do we manage our emotions? When should we manage them? Should we always try to think happy thoughts – is sadness just bad and troublesome? Or are there social rules about how and when we should do this? Arlie Hochschild suggests that society has ‘feeling rules’ about how we are allowed to feel in given situations – particularly at work – and that these rules impact differently on men and women, with women still doing the bulk of the ‘emotional labour’ involved in care jobs in most countries.

Do you manage your emotions most of the time at work? Or in other areas of life? Does your gender affect this?

#S344UOW20 #Tut6 #Mon1230

According to Beyond Blue, it is estimated that in 1 year, 1 million Australian adults will experience depression and 2 million will experience anxiety; that 45% of Australians will experience mental health problem in their lifetime; that; and that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience depression. Anthony Jorm, at the University of Melbourne, estimates that around 15% of Australians suffer from an anxiety disorder, but many Australians don’t understand these issues, can’t recognise the symptoms, and tend to dismiss them as ‘everyday worries’. This serves both to downplay the severity and impact of anxiety issues on the national psyche, but also – importantly – obscure the social basis to such emotions.

Why is there so much mental illness in times of economic prosperity? Sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Zigmund Bauman point out the atomising affect of late modernity, where human relations become more individualised, and we become less invested in keeping our groups and connections together. And we are not helped by the way we structure our modern lives. Work is increasingly temporary and fractious, sending us off to all sorts of places, to work all sorts of hours, with increasing precarity. Our cities continue to sprawl into suburban ‘exopolises’, lacking natural social centres within which people can connect and socialise. And our media changes, becoming supposedly more ‘social’, but with uncertain consequences in terms of the exact impact it has on our face-to-face interaction. As a consequence, some now claim that loneliness is endemic in Australia.

A follow up question is what we can do about these issues, or more precisely, their difficult emotional repercussions? Do we need more expenditure on mental health services? There has been intense investment in mental health resources and treatments over the last few decades in Australia. This includes the establishment of initiatives such as the Black Dog Institute, the headspace National Youth Mental Health Initiative, and recently a multi-sector initiative aimed at ‘Creating Mentally health Workplaces’. Despite these efforts, however, the expenditure on and costs of mental health issues continue to rise, and the prevalence of anxiety issues in our society remains high.

In tandem with this public increase in resources has come a massive increase in the private use of medication to treat mental illness. Gillian Bendelow notes a great rise in pharmacological treatments over previous decades worldwide, and that the use of anti-depressants is seen as the more socially conventional and acceptable approach to the ‘treatment’ of mental illness. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Australia now ranks second in the world in anti-depressant prescriptions.

Are more anti-depressants the solution? Davey and Chan (2012) challenge their effectiveness, and suggest that they should be increasingly used only in combination with psychotherapeutic approaches. However, this approach still individualises the problem, and does little to look at the underlying social conditions that create and contribute to the experience of mental illness.

Perhaps it is time instead to examine, recognise, and cost options for making deeper, structural changes to our social, urban and media environments that impact our sense of sociability and security, and our feelings of anxiety, isolation and loneliness?

#S344UOW20 #Tut5 #Fri1230

According to Beyond Blue, it is estimated that in 1 year, 1 million Australian adults will experience depression and 2 million will experience anxiety; that 45% of Australians will experience mental health problem in their lifetime; that; and that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience depression. Anthony Jorm, at the University of Melbourne, estimates that around 15% of Australians suffer from an anxiety disorder, but many Australians don’t understand these issues, can’t recognise the symptoms, and tend to dismiss them as ‘everyday worries’. This serves both to downplay the severity and impact of anxiety issues on the national psyche, but also – importantly – obscure the social basis to such emotions.

Why is there so much mental illness in times of economic prosperity? Sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Zigmund Bauman point out the atomising affect of late modernity, where human relations become more individualised, and we become less invested in keeping our groups and connections together. And we are not helped by the way we structure our modern lives. Work is increasingly temporary and fractious, sending us off to all sorts of places, to work all sorts of hours, with increasing precarity. Our cities continue to sprawl into suburban ‘exopolises’, lacking natural social centres within which people can connect and socialise. And our media changes, becoming supposedly more ‘social’, but with uncertain consequences in terms of the exact impact it has on our face-to-face interaction. As a consequence, some now claim that loneliness is endemic in Australia.

A follow up question is what we can do about these issues, or more precisely, their difficult emotional repercussions? Do we need more expenditure on mental health services? There has been intense investment in mental health resources and treatments over the last few decades in Australia. This includes the establishment of initiatives such as the Black Dog Institute, the headspace National Youth Mental Health Initiative, and recently a multi-sector initiative aimed at ‘Creating Mentally health Workplaces’. Despite these efforts, however, the expenditure on and costs of mental health issues continue to rise, and the prevalence of anxiety issues in our society remains high.

In tandem with this public increase in resources has come a massive increase in the private use of medication to treat mental illness. Gillian Bendelow notes a great rise in pharmacological treatments over previous decades worldwide, and that the use of anti-depressants is seen as the more socially conventional and acceptable approach to the ‘treatment’ of mental illness. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Australia now ranks second in the world in anti-depressant prescriptions.

Are more anti-depressants the solution? Davey and Chan (2012) challenge their effectiveness, and suggest that they should be increasingly used only in combination with psychotherapeutic approaches. However, this approach still individualises the problem, and does little to look at the underlying social conditions that create and contribute to the experience of mental illness.

Perhaps it is time instead to examine, recognise, and cost options for making deeper, structural changes to our social, urban and media environments that impact our sense of sociability and security, and our feelings of anxiety, isolation and loneliness?

#S344UOW20 #Tut5 #Mon1230