We are a nation in distress and, it would seem, are turning in droves for emotional support to the internet where peer mentoring and support network sites are burgeoning. Online self-help is free, anonymous, immediately accessible and available any time of the day or night, and it clearly works for some people some of the time. But what about safety, confidentiality, boundaries and all those questions that concern us as a profession? And are there opportunities for counsellors and psychotherapists to enhance their work by exploring some of these new sites and services? See our report on page 22.

It must be nearly a decade ago that I talked to a research student on a train about her work with children living in the ghettos of a South American city. What was fascinating about her findings was that despite enormous deprivation and every possible social disadvantage, this population of children had far lower rates of mental illness than children living in an affluent society like Britain. The reason for this now seems to be simply that they were all in the same boat.

Following in the footsteps of Oliver James’ Affluenza and Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety, a new book adds further weight to the view that it is the way we live that contributes enormously to our social problems, including our mental health problems. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better provides an overwhelming bank of evidence that the more unequal a society, the greater will be its social malaise. Countries with the greatest income inequalities, like the UK (where the top 20 per cent have over seven times that of the bottom 20 per cent), have higher levels of addiction, higher homicide levels and prison populations, lower life expectancy, lower levels of trust, higher levels of obesity, higher levels of teenage pregnancy and higher levels of mental illness. For example, 25 per cent of Britons experience mental health problems in any one year, compared to fewer than 10 per cent in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Italy where there is much less differentiation between incomes. I have lost count of the articles we have published debating the conundrum of whether it is the individual or society that needs to change. The evidence from this book is pretty conclusive.

I’m off to live in Scandinavia!