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Categories : Being Happy With Yourself : Being Happy With Others : Your Emotions : Depression :
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Happiness Books On Happiness : Related Articles : How To Be Happy : Happiness Comes Before Success : The Medical Model Of Happiness : Positive Psychology ::
The study of happiness has long been the preserve of religion and philosophy, but this has largely been taken over by psychology and medicine in the last 100 years. Unfortunately these disciplines have looked at happiness in a different way, believing that the way to understand how the mind works is to look at people who come to them complaining of problems with their minds.
The medical model of happiness has therefore become a rather negative one, equating happiness with the absence or 'cure' of unhappiness and mental health problems. Significant progress has been made in many of these areas, in not only recognising and defining them, but also in treating them. The understanding of the chemistry of the brain is also progressing, and the complex .ways that this underlying chemistry affects feelings, emotions and thoughts is starting to be unravelled.
One problem with this medical model is that it has gone a stage further to become the pharmaceutical model of happiness, with a pill for every problem, and this is now becoming such big business for the pharmaceutical firms that some medical authorities are even saying that drug companies are 'inventing' new definitions of mental illnesses as extra target markets for their drugs. This approach is of course very appealing to the modern 'quick-fix' society, and has become the norm for treatment in the NHS and other medical services throughout the world, where doctors are expected to 'cure' patients after a few minutes consultation.
The quick-fix cure for unhappiness has been increasingly questioned by complementary therapists and also from psychologists and doctors, because in reality it puts the problem firmly at the feet of the general practice doctor when the patient comes to them and asks them for a cure, whereas the problems are normally deeply rooted within the patient's lifestyle, and their belief and value systems. In reality the 'patient' doesn't normally have a medical problem, but the expectation in the UK is that the NHS will 'cure' you for free if you have a medical problem, and if you don't have a medical problem you will have to go and pay for help. It is therefore much cheaper to be a patient than someone with a problem to work out. It is also something the NHS was never designed to cope with, but it would take a brave government to take away this expectation of such a free service.
We are currently in the Prozac phase of medicine, and there is
mounting evidence to question the effectiveness of this type of
treatment, just as there was for Valium and Mogadon, which are now
used with greater caution.
Happiness cannot be created by the medical model because it's aim of correcting unhappiness only ever went half way. It only aimed to bring unhappy people back to an acceptable level of happiness.
True happiness should be about bringing your own happiness above the level of the average and normal. Who wants their level of happiness to be the average value in a miserable society? True happiness happens when you take control of your own life and rise above the average to achieve your own true happiness. Fortunately an area of positive psychology is now emerging which is looking at what makes normal people happy.
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