Most of you will know someone with mental illness. How long did it take for them to receive help? How does it affect their lives and those around them? How do you personally feel about mental health? This chapter endeavours to paint a picture of mental health around the globe: the burden, the challenges and the opportunities
The most remarkable human achievement of the past 200 years has been the conquest of premature death. It has been a task of great complexity, drawing on political and economic changes, safe water, improved food supply and distribution, government regulation, medical and technological advance, the spread of literacy, the emancipation of women, the moral struggle against discrimination in all forms, revolutions in communication and connection, and above all, changes in human expectations and values
Future justice has an economic dimension because economic decisions made today will have an impact on the level of wellbeing achievable by people in the future. For example, decisions today to use less of our non-renewable natural resources, such as coal and oil, will influence how much of these resources will be available for people to use in the future
The year 2010 was climatically distinctive. Globally, it was one of the two hottest years in the 150-year (surface thermometer) record. It was also a tumultuous year of extreme weather events — in North America, much of Europe, and in the greater Eurasian region where the combination and scale of flooding (Pakistan and China), landslides (China), extreme heat-waves (Russia, China, Vietnam), and wild fires (Russia) during August was, literally, extraordinary
Traditionally, genetic tests have been firmly placed within a clinical context — clinicians order tests to gather information to help or confirm diagnosis of a condition in a person who is showing symptoms, to predict whether a person with a family history will develop a late-onset condition when the test results can be accurately interpreted (e.g. Huntington disease), or to identify carriers of recessive conditions in a family (e.g. cystic fibrosis)
For the artists involved, the staging of a theatre play requires what surgeons and philosophers call a suture. A stitching on, in a physical sense, of what it is saying, the world it is conjuring up. Without this personal connection, drama is a just jumble of vocalised third-person sentiments and self-conscious arm waving. Add the human element, via the suture, and the activity is transformed
Despite being home to one of the oldest cultures in the world, Australia likes to think of itself as being young. When Australians travel overseas they marvel at ‘the history’ of the places they visit: the architecture, the art, and the customs that were all there before Australia was colonised, before it became a nation
I don’t know that it’s making any difference, is it? And if it is making a difference, how do we begin to quantify the difference it’s making? It’s rather like prayer. How can we know? Without poetry and drama and novels and music and art we know ourselves to be poorer. We know such things as these enrich our existence
Decisions that affect our lives in both trivial and important ways are increasingly being made by algorithms. These algorithms, especially those derived using artificial intelligence (AI), are often inscrutable — at least, they are for now. If we want to hold people and organisations to account for their decisions, and if they want people to have trust in their decisions, we will need to be able to explain why a decision was made. How will we achieve explainable decision making?
I grew up in Legoland writ large. Big brick veneer houses on small blocks treed with conifers and covered with tan bark. It was a happy place, but Wantirna, in Melbourne’s outer east, can’t be mythologised like Green Valley. I wanted out