HAPPY LAND

We examine how social comparison, social contagion, social insecurity and social infrastructure shape public mental health. This is important for understanding the rise in mental health problems in Finland, consistently ranked as the world's happiest country. We use individual-level register data, population surveys, and case studies based on documents and interviews. The City of Tampere, Terveystalo Plc. and Artteli non-profit community serve as policy labs for designing interventions and conducting experiments. The project is implemented by Tampere University, the University of Turku, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, and Pellervo Economic Research. The project makes visible the societal rules of the game that shape public mental health and develops innovative solutions to renew them. This will help Finland emerge as a global benchmark for integrated, data-driven, and ethically grounded mental health governance.

2026

2029