Nancy Hey

It turns out you can do quite a lot in ten years. An amazing round up of the more than 90 collaborations and the changes that are happening as a result. Thank you

⬆️ Pendle, +0.93 ⬆️ Brentwood, +0.76 ⬆️ Colchester, +0.74 ⬇️ Nuneaton and Bedworth, -0.95 ⬇️ Rushmoor, -0.96 ⬇️ Cambridge, -1.00 Some areas of the UK have seen substantial increases in #wellbeing over the past decade – but others have lagged behind.👇 worldwellbeingmovement.org/uk-wellbeing-r…

@LucyGoBag Emotions are there even if you don’t account for them. It’s better if you do. Yes, and is right.

This was such a big message when I was learning how to be a lawyer. I get this and hear it. But it may be retro view. Public debate has changed. How laws are requested have changed. We need to be ready for both - space for entangled emotion and simultaneously drafting of good law

At the National Maritime Museum Greenwich today

@LucyGoBag I know putting numbers on this experience is not the point but policy analysis systematically only puts a value on the life lost and not the ripples of bereavement as you describe and it could easily be done.

..and especially couples and their intimate relationships. I am so so grateful for the bravery here. I go there in my chapter Needful Things. This dad is allowed to say all the long list of things this terrible attack did, not just the obvious ones

If you work in a field like mine please please spend a little time with this devastating interview. It’s authentic and such a hard read. I am seeing far too many attempts to sugar coat complex grief and to not talk about the harm it does to families.. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1…

@PJTheEconomist Kept from being worse by a focus on life satisfaction until the pandemic

Iain is correct. We still live in the shadow of the financial crisis and collapse in growth that followed. Median earnings today are at least £10k below where they would have been if continued on previous 50 year trend. From that has followed a lot of our political dysfunction.

@sleeepysandy @LucyGoBag Frustrating when a) there are things that work and b ) well intentioned effort where the impact is not looked at and is harmful

@LucyGoBag Excellent piece. Some of the interventions I saw in schools - giving all children CBT tools, for instance - were clearly harmful. If you have a cold you take a paracetamol. They’re not harmful. But we don’t take them daily. Teachers are not MH professionals.

Mental-health lessons in schools sound like a great idea. The trouble is, they don’t work | Lucy Foulkes | The Guardian theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@stianwestlake Yes definitely. The margins, likelihood of success as a partner and the effort needed for bids especially collaboration make it unviable.

If you're interested, check out my blog post here: open.substack.com/pub/magicsmoke…

When it comes to how @ESRC funds social science research, universities are close to the only game in town. Our systems and processes make it hard for other sorts of research organisation to even apply for funding.

@DKThomp Not entirely convinced there’s all that big of a loneliness crisis - only that we now realise social connection and support are more important than we previously thought and it matters. But advocacy needs to make it a crisis for there to be action. Social media impact is mixed

My hottest take on this subject is I don't think social media is creating a "loneliness crisis." I think America's social crisis is, in some ways, the opposite of loneliness. The evidence that loneliness is rising for all ages that use social media is surprisingly weak. If we understand loneliness narrowly as something like "an experienced gap between our felt and desired social connection," then loneliness is kind of good, in small doses. Loneliness is social motivation. And we'd expect that a shock of social isolation—like, say, COVID—would lead to strong efforts among people to socialize more. But the data shows something closer to the opposite. Face-to-face socializing continued to decline between 2021 and 2024 and alone time increased, for almost all groups. I think a bunch of factors—incl., comfortable homes, ample entertainment, an on-demand delivery economy, and the dopamine-exhausting effect of non-stop phone use—are overriding, or fundamentally altering, people's desire to be physically around other people. The crisis is aloneness. And it's being partly caused by, in a weird way, our *inability* to connect with the healthy feeling loneliness

@Jess_Deighton Very interested to see the findings. Would love to hear more on the safety and wellbeing intervention.

They’ve been a long time in the making but our large scale mental health in schools trial findings are out now! Lots to dig into, and we’ll have events next month to talk through in more detail.

We’ve completed one of the world’s largest school-based mental health trials through @EBPUnit with @UCL. Read the results from Education for Wellbeing and find out how schools can build students’ mental health and wellbeing: orlo.uk/oF5Bn

@OxWellResearch @SciReports What’s this suggesting about what’s missing from the econometric models?

RESEARCH: Machine Learning (ML) algorithms can predict human #wellbeing better than traditional econometric models, according to new research published in @SciReports. Read more👇 wellbeing.hmc.ox.ac.uk/news/machine-l…

The existing resources really matter

🎯 Achievement orientation—setting goals for growth—strongly predicts better mental wellbeing. Encourage PhD students to focus on personal growth! 🚀 #GoalSetting #PhD tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… @LarisaDinu4 @Garethstudentwb @kckirkman

New real-time suicide data have been published by @OHID, taking us to October 2024. National suicide rate isn’t rising - important at time of economic stress for many. No rise in men, women or any age group. Although, needless to say, no rate is acceptable. #suicideprevention

We are so excited that #BeeWell schools have been receiving their dashboards and reports today! 250 schools took part in #BeeWell in Autumn 2024, and we can’t wait to support them to explore and respond to what young people are telling us about their wellbeing.

@boys_nicholas The earliest reference to the ‘wellbeing of the nation’ that I found referred to avoiding high house prices

The damage that a chronic under-supply of homes does to society cannot be overstated. By increasing both prices & price volatility, it reduces disposable income, enhances generational & social inequality, depresses labour market flexibility & suppresses births & family formation

@stianwestlake @DEHEdgerton Like many things in implementation it needs constant attention type of leadership to keep renewing and maintaining the activity over time to some rather prosaic.

@DEHEdgerton I think this is consistent with the idea that an under-rated barrier to innovation procurement is for want a better term “state capacity”.

Using Government procurement to drive innovation is the Great White Hope of innovation policy. Pretty much every report on innovation policy I've read in the past 20 years calls for it, often in exasperated terms ('why has no-one done this no-brainer??').

What is the meaning of life? What would you remember as bringing satisfaction, meaning, and purpose to your life? These are the modest questions that David Lagakos, Stelios Michalopoulos and I try to answer by "interviewing" over 1,400 Americans. We don't get to talk to them

I’m not sure I can do this with good grace so I’m not going to. There are so many ironies here it’s hard to know where to start.

There's still time to apply! We are launching an £11.5m investment with @SciTechgovuk to fund the development and management of a global evidence synthesis infrastructure. Apply now: orlo.uk/d7qFp Closes 12 Dec