Happiness and the Brain

Dr. G. reporting on Better Brains…

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the suicidal death rate around the world has risen 60 percent in the past 45 years, and suicide has become one of the top three causes for death of young adults (ages 15-44).  

Common sense alone should be enough to read the signs.  Media brings faces to the raising stats and stories of cyber-bulling and teen depression. 

Suicide is life’s code breaker.



Still the metrics should raise both eyebrows and immediate questions:  What post industrial values have we cultivated in the last 45 years to make life so ghastly a proposition that taking one’s own life seems like the better deal? What are we, as parents, educational and business leaders and policy makers, doing to contribute to make life so unbearable?  How do we expect our children and future social entrepreneurs to achieve and shine in creative thinking and expression with the layers of stress paralyzing their good brains and actions?

Two new films, Happy and Project Happiness, presented respectfully at recent Qi Global and WisdomYouth conferences, respond to the haunting mental health stats by asking a simple question:  How can we be happy?  Where Happy, the Film, took a broad brush stroke approach dipped in positive psychology and comparative culture research, Project Happiness zeroes in on an intimate story of Northern California (Santa Cruz) high school youth examing the question that leads them on a classic Siddhartha journey, gaining access to interviews with film maker George Lucas, actor and Buddhist activist Richard Gere and the noble orator of happiness, His Holiness, the XIV the Dalai Lama.

In a results driven, coaching era, each film poses the question by directing our attention to the central probe of all great religions:  Why do we suffer?  By turning the question on its head, both films re-frame an ancient quandry in 21st century “brain awareness” terms, e.g., both include key neuroscientists and research psychologists who have brought the “happy question” into the research lab.  In each we see a story unfold, path determined by directors, producers and script writers with foreknowledge of the impressive neuroscientific research correlating contemplative practices like mindfulness and “compassion or metta meditation” with happy brains.  As I’ve noted on Twitter and written on Bodiesinspace.com, neuroscientists now understand a bit more about how skilled engagement with ancient, contemplative, self-cultivation practices correlates with gray matter growth in the prefrontal cortex.  Evidence points as well to the “dopamine reward” and “vagus nerve effect” correlated to the practice of compassion or heart meditation. 

Yet, what can the new neuro-centric recognition of contemplative traditions offer to someone suffering?  Like Buddhist teachers before them, child psychiatrist Dan Siegal and father of positive psychologist Martin Seligman point out, the meta-cognition of brain /mind processing offers many the freeing opportunity to achieve insight into their own existential behavior.  The insight may be momentary and fleeting, it may resonanate, marinate and endure.  Regardless of its time measure or quality of illumination, self awareness is achieved.  A new pattern revealed.  To see and name a pattern opens up the space for change.  Or as we say in the design thinking field, “problem naming precedes problem solving.”  A little brain / mind  awareness education can go a long way.

The pursuit of happiness is nothing new to American or AsiaPacific culture — each society has plumbed philosophic depths but today, with the bald facts of deep unhappiness, deep suffering, philosophy must couple with science, theraputics, education and policy to prevent more children and young adults from taking their lives.  As the King of Bhutan suggests: Let us rethink our obsession with Gross National Product and instead put our metric attention on Gross National Happiness!

Links to the films: