Well-being and the rise of psychotherapy in Uganda

Perspectives on happiness and mental health differ across the world. Westernized perspectives present happiness as an individualized state of being that can be cultivated and sustained through continuous effort. In areas where these western beliefs are prominent, happiness is established as the norm, and as a result, a global trend has emerged where the absence of happiness is increasingly medicalized and pathologized. When deviation from the norm occurs, it spurs individuals to search out medical and psychological interventions.