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    An Anatomy of Happiness
    An Anatomy of Happiness
    An Anatomy of Happiness
    Ebook28 pages3 hours

    An Anatomy of Happiness

    By Adam Staten

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    About this ebook

    In an era when life is safer and more comfortable than ever before feelings of unhappiness, depression and anxiety pervade our society. An Anatomy of Happiness is an exploration of the latest research about what makes us happy and what makes us despair. It draws on the literature from medicine, neuroscience, anthropology, economics and psychology to explain the social, psychological and biological basis of this elusive emotion.

    By revealing the key factors that underpin our happiness this varied and intriguing body of research is beginning to shine a light on the path to attaining long standing mental well-being and escaping the clutches of depression. Along the way an Anatomy of Happiness reveals why Facebook makes us jealous, why being generous makes us feel good, and the exciting new ways in which an unhappy mind can be trained to be happy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAdam Staten
    Release dateSep 15, 2015
    ISBN9781311761903
    An Anatomy of Happiness
    Author

    Adam Staten

    Dr Adam Staten works as a GP in the NHS in the UK. After graduating from Cambridge University and King's College London School of Medicine he completed a short commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps during which time he served in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. He then left the army to complete GP training in the NHS.His thoughts on common mental health problems are influenced by his studies in Biological Anthropology whilst at Cambridge University, widespread travel including his time in the Army, and his many thousands of hours spent with patients in his surgery.He is also the author/editor of GP Wellbeing: Combatting Burnout in General Practice, Combatting Burnout: A Guide for Medical Students and Junior Doctors, and the General Practice text book Practical General Practice.He now works and lives in Milton Keynes with his wife, children and a beagle called Monty.

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      Book preview

      An Anatomy of Happiness - Adam Staten

      Introduction

      Perhaps it is odd to start an analysis of happiness with an encounter, in fact multiple encounters, with unhappiness but that is where the inspiration for this essay began. I am a doctor working in general practice in the UK and one morning I saw a succession of patients all of whom had been prescribed antidepressants and all of whom had been on them for a long time. Not for the first time I wondered, what an earth is going on?

      This was not an unusual morning. A quick audit of my practice’s 13,800 patients revealed that 11% of them had received a diagnosis of depression at some point and 10% had received a diagnosis of anxiety, a great many more had been diagnosed with ‘low mood’, people who didn’t quite cross the threshold of depression but were unhappy none-the-less. Presumably this is the tip of a pretty bleak iceberg. These are, or should be, the people whose unhappiness is most severe. These are the people who have reached the point where they need to seek outside help to overcome the way they are feeling. One assumes that there must be a significant cohort of people who have not reached this point but who are struggling with their unhappiness by themselves or with the help of friends and family.

      Whilst it is not correct to use depression and unhappiness interchangeably, because depression has its own specific diagnostic criteria and is something more than simple unhappiness, many people’s depression begins with a slide through unhappiness and people often first recognise a relapse of depression with increased feelings of unhappiness.

      Through my career I have worked in many areas of medicine including psychiatry, paediatrics, geriatrics and acute medicine, and I have been continually astonished by the depth of unhappiness that seems to pervade our society. This is manifest in all kinds of people

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