I’m a serial depressive – could a £900 happiness summit cheer me up?

At first my very British cynicism got in the way, but then something curious started to happen…

On my way to the World Happiness Summit in London, I receive a Whats-App video from my brother. My niece, five-year-old Ada, is moulding Play-Doh, singing under her breath. ‘What’s the song?’ asks her father from behind the camera. ‘In-es-cap-able de-ath,’ she chants, following up with a quicker, zanier, and more jaunty: ‘Inescapable death.’
This is who we Bettses are: realists, doom merchants. I too obsessed about mortality at Ada’s age, concluding that I was a dogmatic atheist. Ada appears less sombre, though she terrifies adults with talk of the apocalypse. Our gene pool is not made up of shiny, happy people. It is a mob of morose depressives whose default position is melancholy rather than mirth.
Once these attitudes distinguished us. Today, most of our fellow countrymen appear to have the blues. Post-pandemic, we find ourselves mired in cost-of-living crises, escalations of various global conflicts, electoral uncertainty, political extremism, and severe environmental angst. The United Kingdom is among the most prolific consumers of antidepressants in the world. In England, 8.6 million patients were prescribed happy pills in 2022-23, almost double the number for 2011.
In the World Happiness Report 2024, which ranks countries by their residents’ own life evaluations, the UK sits at a non-impressive number 20 and the United States at 23, falling out of the top 20 for the first time. This has been driven by a collapse in the well-being of Americans under 30, a trend reflected in Western Europe. Dr Corey Keyes, professor emeritus of sociology at Emory University, identifies the collective mood as ‘languishing’ – a sort of joyless apathy – in his new book of the same name. However we classify it, the need for happiness has rarely felt more pressing.
This is where the World Happiness Summit, aka WoHaSu, comes in. Not merely a summit, in fact, but a global movement ‘to bring awareness about the benefits behind the science of happiness’. There are variously priced tickets – from £99 to attend remotely, through to £974 for a ‘premium package’ (including a special reception, networking lunches and better seating to boot).
It is largely the work of one woman, Nicaraguan-born, Miami-based powerhouse Karen Guggenheim, 53, who also has a new book out: Cultivating Happiness. As she tells me, her journey to happiness started a decade ago with a great deal of unhappiness – a lightbulb moment that might have derailed anyone else.
‘In March 2013, my amazing husband of 21 years, Ricardo, caught a cold, which developed into pneumonia and within 10 days he was gone. I made some life-saving decisions. First, I decided to live for my children, and then I chose happiness.
‘My way forward was through purpose and meaning. I decided to pursue an MBA at Georgetown University just four months after Ricardo passed. I became happy again – at first, by copying what happy people do. They say yes to new friendships, they say yes to dinner.’
Having put her back into her own happiness, she cast the net wider after graduating. ‘I started educating myself about the science behind well-being. Six weeks later, I quit my job and put on the first World Happiness Summit in 2017.’
The opening conference was in Guggenheim’s home city of Miami. Three more followed there, then one in Italy’s Como in 2023, and now London. WoHaSu also runs a ‘chief happiness officer’ programme, co-certified by Florida International University. There’s a free app, an ‘elements of well-being’ course, plus a YouTube channel. As Guggenheim argues: ‘You can’t be happy all the time, but you can work on its elements. One of our maxims is, “Feel the science.” To know it is not enough. You have to do it!’
Do I do happiness? As a medicated depressive, I endeavour to avoid misery. My first attempt at a solution – in my late 20s – was St John’s wort. Later, after a period in which first I was seriously ill, then my father dangerously so, my mother didn’t speak to me for the best (read: worst) part of a decade. A year in, it became apparent that I had succumbed to depression proper. My doctor prescribed psychotherapy, which I engaged in for a few months before running out of funds.
The next great descent came in my late 30s. I tried cognitive behavioural therapy, a form of talking therapy, which proved costly and useless for me. I was put on citalopram, a drug in the family of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a variant of which I remain on 14 years later. The drug changed my mental loop from ‘I want to die’ to ‘Things could be worse’. Only if one has been there will one appreciate the enormity of this achievement.
I keep a list of pleasure-inducing activities for when my brain chemistry begins to plummet: art galleries, Liberty’s button department, the sea. I strive to maintain not merely ‘sleep hygiene’, but ‘life hygiene’: some degree of structure and nourishment. Most obviously, I gave up self-medicating with alcohol 10 years ago. I met Terence, my cheery partner, shortly after, and we created a cheery home. However, I couldn’t say that happiness is my norm.
‘Should happiness be something we expect? What even is happiness?’ I email Guggenheim in a panic the night before the summit. She replies: ‘For me, happiness is deeply connected to people. It’s about investing in relationships, having a clear purpose, and pro-social behaviours. Why not aim for this?’
And so, I find myself approaching London’s Southbank Centre, ‘inescapable death’ and Karen Guggenheim’s words competing in my ears. The crowd is a grinning mob of 800 or so from almost 400 cities, some as far afield as Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Kenya, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. The average attendee is 44, white and female, plus there’s an army of girlish Gen Z volunteers. There’s a rainbow of colourful trouser suits, chaps with man buns, a former MP I recognise, plus a few self-styled gurus in white whom I avoid.
Inside the auditorium, there is a riot of hugging, whooping and dancing, as attendees get down to DJ MoodSwing, there to ‘maintain energy’. It’s a lot for before 9am. I fake absorption in my goody bag (a few leaflets – not a patch on Goop’s at its London wellness summit of 2019).
‘Welcome to WoHaSu!’ a fuchsia-suited Guggenheim cries to happy hysteria. One of the emcees declares: ‘Let’s shift the culture!’ Oh, God, she’s demanding we bond with those sitting near us. I stare Britishly ahead, until a 20-something taps me on the shoulder. Loath as I am to admit it, Ohla’s enthusiasm is infectious…
Beatlemania ensues at the arrival of the first guest speaker – bestselling author, Harvard Business School professor, and friend of Oprah, Arthur Brooks. He tells us that our job is to be the ‘start-up entrepreneur’ of our lives and that joy is the product of struggle plus meaning. The good news is that the science suggests that although half our happiness may be genetic, 25 per cent remains under our ‘direct managerial control’ via habits surrounding faith, family, friendships and work.
Brooks is a terrific evangelist. Only, I slightly feel that ‘evangelist’ is the word. A Catholic, he acknowledges that his sources of meaning may not be everyone’s. That said, as his children hit 18, he demanded that they, the ‘entrepreneurs’, provide Brooks, the ‘venture capitalist’, with a ‘business plan’ for their lives. One was deemed insufficient so Brooks rejected it. Said son is now married, with children, in the wake of a military career, at the age of 23. Clearly it worked for the young Brooks family, but had this been me in my 20s, I suspect I would have been destined for the mother of all midlife crises.
Still, the morning is as fascinating as it is fast-paced. Ukrainian psychologist Alla Klymenko speaks about feeling lost. LSE’s Professor Lord Richard Layard, a nonagenarian who has addressed all six WoHaSus, discusses the education system and the crisis in youthful contentment. Then the American Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy swings by, asserting that well-being ‘is the issue of our time’.
I am less enamoured by the afternoon events. Corporate happiness experts witter on about ‘profit with purpose’, ‘crafting nourishing ecosystems’ and channelling our ‘inner tigers’, which feels like empty virtue-signalling. Another demands that we hug for ‘longer than six seconds’ so that our brains register that we’re doing it. There is one highlight though – Dr Amit Sood, CEO of the Global Center for Resiliency and Well-being, who is fully deserving of the standing ovation WoHaSu grants every speaker, rousing us with tales of how he went from being a ‘kid with no smiles’ to an adult surrounded by love.
I skip the Lego ‘purposeful play’ workshop, emerging from the day’s summit upbeat. Happiness feels doable, practical even… Only mine doesn’t last.
Slumped back in my seat at 8.50am the next morning for the second day of the summit, I am experiencing not so much an attitude as an exhaustion problem, despite DJ MoodSwing’s exhortation to shake my backside. Where do these WoHaSuvians get their energy? My introversion is acute.
I run into Guggenheim and admit to being hug-wary, not least of the now eight-second variant that has been declared WoHaSu form. She laughs: ‘Me too. I mean, I’m happy, but I’m not’ – she whoops – ‘happy.’ More whoops as DJ MoodSwing invites us to rave our way into the conference’s final phase, in which the World Happiness Report 2024 will be launched.
Reacting to its evidence, Professor Layard expresses support for a ban on social media for those under 16, an idea met with approval by an audience transmitting proceedings via precisely these channels.
Next, Yale professor Laurie Santos, who has studied the science of happiness, takes the stage to record a session of her hit podcast The Happiness Lab with British television doctor Rangan Chatterjee. Despite Dr C being as cogent as he is dashing, rebellion rises within me. I feel as if the marrow has been sucked from my bones by all of this unrelenting talk of happiness. I stagger home dazed. By 8pm, I’m in bed, where I sleep for 12 hours.
The next day, I feel even more dour. I’m reminded of when I had to write an article about what made me happy and picked martinis and great sex while the other participants offered responses such as: ‘The smile on the face of a child.’
This ‘purpose-driven, striving for happiness, then having one’s efforts rewarded’ model feels very Protestant in its work ethic, very American too. I call Paul Dolan, professor of behavioural science at LSE and author of two bestselling happiness guides, in which he discusses less conventional routes to fulfilment, including not questing for ‘the one’, not going into higher education, and acts rooted in self-interest.
It turns out that Dolan was there for WoHaSu’s finale too, texting ‘ranty messages’ to friends. ‘I couldn’t take too much of it,’ he chuckles. ‘It’s a worthy endeavour, but it all felt a bit too sanctimonious to me. Brits are cynical.’
He reassures me: ‘It’s OK to bumble about and not have a plan. I like simple things, quick wins. Make happiness easy, not effortful. It’s all in the small stuff: tending the garden, walking the dog…’
Then, a curious thing happens. Once my oracle has allowed me to vent my WoHaSu angst, my temper improves, and I find myself starting to experience its benefits. I begin listening to Santos’s The Happiness Lab from its start, and, rather than rolling my eyes, I feel lifted. I remember how wry and likeable I found Karen Guggenheim and relish reading her book, too. Though I detest the word ‘inspirational’, Guggenheim really is.
Then, in search of Dolan’s small wins, I gaze at tulips, listen to my beloved ancient history podcasts and kiss the dog so passionately she acquires a lipsticked nose.
That weekend, I attend a dinner party at which the topic turns to mood. One guest says that she’s having a ‘bad patch’. Another shows us the tattoo he has of the date on which he tried to end it all. Two of our party have lost siblings to suicide, another their closest friend. Not one of us remains untouched.
I come away feeling grateful for WoHaSu, and thinking that there is no more vital cause. Requests have come in from China, Kenya, the US, Iceland, the Netherlands, Greece, Colombia and Ireland to host the next one. Attending will be a recent London convert – online, that is, at no risk of an eight-second hug.
Cultivating Happiness: Overcome Trauma and Positively Transform Your Life, by Karen Guggenheim, is out now (Penguin, £16.99); books.telegraph.co.uk 
Watch past events at youtube.com/@wohasu