Earlier this year, one of the more unusual speeches in the House of Commons began by outlining the disturbing portrait of mental health in the UK: in the past ten years, the number of prescriptions for antidepressants has risen five-fold, from nine million to 46 million.
Yet this was not a report from the Ministry of Health. It was an intervention by a politician, about the value of mindfulness. He was talking passionately about the ancient system of meditation – dating back more than 2,000 years, to well before the time of the Buddha – in preventing and dealing with the breakdown of society.
Read the rest of my latest article on the Huffington Post UK, in advance of the upcoming Awake in the World event in London.
From: From our President