What is the future of wellbeing?

University of Cambridge

Our wellbeing is essential to our overall quality of life. But what is wellbeing? Why is it so hard to pin down? How is it different to mental health, and what can we do to understand, measure and improve it? We talked with psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Amy Orben, psychiatrist Dr Tamsin Ford, and welfare economist Dr Mark Fabian to try and get to grips with wellbeing. In doing so, we learnt about the negative (and positive!) effects of the pandemic, how wellbeing differs for children and adults, and the influence of ever-evolving technology on our wellbeing. This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan and Naomi Clements-Brod. Annie Thwaite and Charlotte Zemmel provide crucial research and production support for Series 2. Please take our survey.How did you find us? Do you want more Mind Over Chatter in your life? Less? We want to know. So we put together this survey https://forms.gle/r9CfHpJVUEWrxoyx9. If you could please take a few minutes to fill it out, it would be a big help. In this episode: 0:00 - Introductions - meet the guests 03:00 - What's the difference between well being and mental health? 05:49 - What role does culture play in well being? 06:30 - Wellbeing and economics. How do we think about wellbeing outside of psychology? 09:35 - How do we measure wellbeing? 13:15 - Could we measure wellbeing from moment to moment? 15:01 - We’ve reached the recap point 19:04 - Can wellbeing be factored into factors that measure societal progress, like productivity GDP? 21:25 - How has COVID19 affected wellbeing at a policy level? 24:35 - Do the well being needs of children and adults differ? 26:30 - What about adolescents, how do their needs differ? 29:35 - How is wellbeing research going to change in the future? Could we use life satisfaction to measure social progress? 32:00 - Is there a link between technology and well being or mental health? 35:35 - How do we react to technological change as a society? The debate around screen time. 37:20 - Time for another recap! 43:15 - Measuring student experiences during the pandemic 45:40 - How we might think differently about wellbeing after the pandemic 47:45 - Are we all in the same boat? How do we make sure people aren’t left behind? 50:05 - How is this new thinking about well being going to shape our lives in the future?For individuals and for governments and policymakers? 55:45 - What is it to live a good life? 57:30 - What do you look forward to thinking about the future? 59:05 - Recap three. Let’s close this thing out.