Lisa Appignanesi, Visiting Professor at King’s College London and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature talks to us about finding ”true” happiness.

About Lisa Appignanesi

"I’m a Visiting Professor in Medical Humanities at King’s College London. I’ve written books on anger, on love and trials of passions, and on women.
I’m fascinated by the subject of emotions: extreme emotions, madness, Freud, the therapeutic and psychiatric professions."

Happiness has become medicalised

Much of our life has been colonised by the medical professions in the 21st century. Happiness itself has become medicalised, as has unhappiness. We become less tolerant of frustration. We think we immediately need to run to a medical psychiatrist or a therapist if we can’t cope with our daily life. We have medicalised our children. One of the interesting things that’s happened in this century is that children’s behaviour has been so grossly medicalised that we live in an era where all our attention is at a deficit because we have so much information being pumped at us through our various devices and through the World Wide Web. We’ve actually medicalised children’s attention deficit into a disorder.
Attention deficit disorder first came into being when Ritalin® was discovered to have an effect on children’s attention; from being a very minor category of behaviour and psychiatric intervention, it became a rather large category. More and more children were diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. We have to ask ourselves, in a time when we’re so concerned with the attention economy, do we want to target the child itself with a disorder which seems to be linked so much to this attention economy. It may not actually be a disorder of the child. It may be a disorder of society as a whole and needs intervention other than medical intervention.

Key Points

• Much of our life has been colonised by the medical professions in the 21st century. Happiness itself has become medicalised, as has unhappiness.
• We’ve actually medicalised children’s attention deficit into a disorder. It may not actually be a disorder of the child. It may be a disorder of society as a whole and needs intervention other than medical intervention.
• We may have more happiness if we pay attention to ways in which we can change the system or make it, rather than engaging with doctors.
• Happiness is not only something that exists for a moment. You can be happy and still have bad moments. You can be happy and still have very difficult times in a relationship or in a set of relationships.