BBI proposes happiness department to deal with Kenyans' sadness

President Uhuru Kenyatta reads through the BBI report at State House, Nairobi.

To deal with Kenyans’ mental health challenges and sadness, the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) task force has proposed the creation of a Happiness department.  

According to the task force report, the department whose role will be to support Kenyans’ wellness will be domiciled in the Ministry of Health with offices at to county level.

“Ministry of Health should have a Department of Happiness, Wellness, and Mental Health dedicated to working on policies and standards in this area. They should be promoted to Counties that have the health mandate,” indicated the report.

The department, according to the team, should be linked to Culture ministry to ensure that programmes and approaches are informed by the country’s cultural institutions

“This should also be linked to the Ministry of Culture to ensure that the programmes and approaches are informed by Kenya’s cultural institutions and their approaches to wellness and mental health.”

As part of the work on the Human Development Index, Kenya should produce a disaggregated Happiness Index

According to the UN report, covering 2016 to 2018, Kenya ranked at position 121 out of 156 countries assessed in happiness index, hence the need to improve on the area.

Despite poor ranking in the world, Kenya was the best ranked in East Africa region followed by Uganda at position 136 with Rwanda and Tanzania trail at 153 and 154 respectively.

Based on the UN study, people’s emotions can be gauged based on six parameters. In the case of this study, they include the country’s GDP, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceptions of corruptions and dystopia-a dictatorial government.