Alexander Laghai

Welfare Epidemic Alexander Laghai

Liberal democracy brought forward the role of laws, social justice, individual rights and welfare state. It has become a major force shaping the structure and function of all the welfare societies for the same reason we invented armchair, alarm clock, calculator and notepad to make life easier. The architects of the welfare state, in their wildest dreams, would never have imagined that the objectives of the welfare state could produce such an extraordinary number of people with dependency and poor mental health. How did the transparent, orderly and modern welfare state form a public habit and build a culture of dependency? To put the finger on this claim, over sixty-five million people in the United States, nearly six million in England, three million in Scandinavia, over eleven million in France and about half of Ireland's population are now the recipients of the public welfare. Over the course of several decades, the Nordic model of subsidy-taxation challenged the capitalist countries over an ideal system just as the Catholic and Protestant flight over the mechanism of salvation. The social welfare has now become a collective mindset in feminist literature not only across the Nordic countries but also in continental Europe and the United States. What psychology can tell us about the prevalence and motivational causes of welfare dependency and poor mental health. The WELFARE EPIDEMIC is about the story of ordinary people and places where social welfare and poor mental health are and continue to be the reality of life. It explores the building block of the welfare state not merely with conventional economic tools but with analysis of social and welfare institutions. It traces the links between poor mental health and social welfare programs.