Madeleine Bunting recognises that the English-speaking world's focus on the individual has been disastrous - in her words, leaving "an unpleasant cocktail of celebrity, cool, acquisitiveness and depression" (Britain is at last waking up to the politics of wellbeing, February 20). What is strange, then, is the apparent hope that solutions that try just to improve individual welfare will get us out of this mess.
While starting from urgent and appropriate concerns, both Oliver James and Richard Layard, cited by Bunting as key players in the "politics of wellbeing", risk promoting the very individualism they identify as being the cause of the problem. Each starts from a recognition that our problems of "social recession" are rooted in society's undermining of our core human need for confirming and mutually supportive relationships, but moves to thinking in terms of ways of curing individuals of the consequences.
Layard continues to insist, wrongly, that all the evidence points to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) as the only treatment worth considering for anxiety and depression. This is a therapy that aims to cure individuals of their unhelpful thinking. It does not draw on the social and relational contexts that are crucial resources to support recovery. Neither is CBT a "cure-all", and its promotion as such misses the point that people thrive in relationships - and that relational impoverishment requires relational nourishment.
James, in debate with Layard, points forcefully to the limitations of CBT, but is his alternative simply other therapies that take people out of their everyday lives and relationships, cure them, and send them back? Bunting cites his important point, expressed eloquently in his latest book Affluenza, that "turbo-capitalism strips out many of the social contexts which give people meaning and orientate them".
James himself suggests the things that matter are security, connectedness to others, authenticity and autonomy, and feeling competent. Can you imagine anyone achieving these without drawing strength and resources from family and other relationships? Can you draw from relationships without putting into them? Why, then, are we clinging to the notion that individually focused "cures" are what will turn us into a society of "happier" people?
Perhaps this is just an indication of how powerful the ethos of individual achievement has become. Family therapy, for example, is inadequately and patchily provided in the NHS despite clear evidence of its long-term effectiveness and "value for money". Research support is provided for individually oriented therapies, but rarely for therapies that work through relationships. So there is most research on CBT, and that is taken to prove that CBT is best. It doesn't. It just proves that if you shine all of your light under one particular bush you will fail to see what value lies elsewhere.
Madeleine Bunting praises Denmark's "appreciation of the importance of relationships ... throughout the social infrastructure of the country". Such an appreciation of the importance of relationships by politicians, through our health and other public services as well as in our personal lives, would serve us well.
· Peter Stratton is professor of family therapy at Leeds University.
· If you wish to respond to an article in which you have featured either directly or indirectly, email response@theguardian.com or write to Response, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. We cannot guarantee to publish all responses, and we reserve the right to edit pieces for both length and content.
