Chapter 16 – Happiness and Mental Health: The Flip Side of S-AD

The “Happiness” movement sprang up in the 1980s as a response to the negativity of much depression research. This came largely from the early work of Dr. George Vaillant and the longitudinal study of Harvard alumni, and that of Drs. Martin Selligman and Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi in positive psychology. In Australia the Act-Belong-Commit program, a major public health mental health promotion campaign, offers the first comprehensive, evidence-based mental health promotion lifestyle intervention for adoption in clinical practice.