Richard Layard on Mental Health: The New Frontier for the Welfare State

Mental illness is the greatest hidden problem in our society. Tackling it would do more than anything else to raise our national wellbeing. Mental health is crucial for our quality of life and it also has huge effects on our ability to learn, to work and to be a good parent. There are many excellent ways of promoting mental health and treating mental illness, but they are not properly available at present. Lord Richard Layard is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, where he was founder-director of the Centre for Economic Performance. He now heads the Centre’s Programme on Well-Being. More info here: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2012/03/20120306t1830vSZT.aspx