One in six people suffer depression or a chronic anxiety disorder. These are not the worried well but those in severe mental pain with conditions cri….

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes..

The strongest predictor of unhappiness is anyone who has had a mental illness in the last 10 years. It is an even stronger predictor of unhappiness t….

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition..

Openness about death has led to greater care about all aspects of dying..

Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies..

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal..

In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plu….

Most people come to fear not death itself, but the many terrible ways of dying..

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious..

Is anyone serious about the politics of happiness? David Cameron dipped a toe in the water, using the word lightly, but denying the hard policies it ….

So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners….

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability..

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main reli….

People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death..

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government….

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compare….

The best care on earth cannot prevent us all dying in the end..

Nothing keeps people together like the exalted conviction that they alone are to be spared that eternal anguish of hell fire to which everyone else w….

My mother begged doctors to end her life. She was beyond the physical ability to swallow enough of the weak morphine pills she had around her. When s….

The pens sharpen – Islamophobia! No such thing. Primitive Middle Eastern religions, and most others, are much the same – Islam, Christianity and Juda….