Living in the UK in 2023 is no recipe for happiness, new official measures of the national mood confirm, but a solution may be at hand: move to a remote island in the north Atlantic.
After improvements in overall wellbeing in Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the worst of the pandemic had passed, during the last year measures of life satisfaction and happiness have fallen and anxiety increased, meaning that overall, the people of the UK are still less content than before Covid hit.
In England it means almost all of the wellbeing bounceback between March 2021 and March 2022 has been reversed, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Scotland bucked the national mood slump with rising measures of happiness, and the people of the Outer Hebrides scored the highest average happiness ratings of anywhere, although with a small population the ONS said it might not be directly comparable with big towns and cities.
The chain of islands, situated a ferry-hop away from the north-west coast of mainland Scotland, are known for their wildlife and white beaches and are described by the tourist board as “your very own slice of heaven”. The people there also have the second highest life satisfaction score of any location in the UK. The most satisfied people live in the Shetland Islands, the equally blustery Scottish archipelago lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway.
Overall, the annual personal wellbeing figures showed a statistically significant fall in all measures in England, and an overall UK fall in scores people gave when asked “How satisfied are you with your life nowadays?”, “How happy did you feel yesterday?” and “To what extent do you feel that the things that you do in your life are worthwhile?”. Anxiety levels rose overall and more than a quarter of women (27%) reported high levels of anxiety compared with one in five men. The last time the ONS reported this in 2016, the figure for women was 22%.
“The proportion of people reporting poor wellbeing across the four measures remains higher than pre-pandemic levels,” the ONS said.
Richard Layard, a co-founder of the Action for Happiness campaign, said: “This report confirms that the top factor [correlating with happiness] is health and the next factor is human relationships, which includes employment, and the notion that household income is the one thing that matters is falsified.”
Samaritans, the charity that runs helplines for people who feel suicidal, described the report as “worrying” and “yet further evidence of the huge mistake that the government risks making if local suicide prevention funding is allowed to run out”.
“With happiness levels down and anxiety increasing across the UK, it is clearly time to be investing more in the mental health of the nation not less and I urge the chancellor to right this wrong in his upcoming autumn statement,” said Mubeen Bhutta, the head of policy, public affairs and campaigns at Samaritans.
The places in England with the fastest-growing happiness were Mid-Sussex, Malvern Hills and Colchester; and the places with the greatest decreases in life satisfaction over the last year were Three Rivers (in Hertfordshire), Rushmoor (around Aldershot) and Worthing in West Sussex.
The figures showed that adults who separated from their partner were more likely to report poor wellbeing compared with those who were married or in a civil partnership and that degree-level education could also help. Adults whose highest level of qualification was a degree equivalent or above were least likely to report poor wellbeing in terms of life satisfaction, feeling things are worthwhile, and happiness.
But in the end, moving to a Scottish island is not the surest way of boosting wellbeing. Staying healthy is.
“Self-reported health had a larger contribution on reported life satisfaction than any other characteristic or circumstance considered in the analysis,” the ONS said. “Adults in Great Britain reporting ‘good health’ rate their life satisfaction … 16.6% higher than those reporting ‘bad health’ … Self-reported health was the only circumstance or characteristic to have a large contribution on feeling things done in life are worthwhile, happiness, and anxiety.”
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
