This interim report warns of the hidden psychological dangers of the recession – unmet psychological needs. Much publicity surrounds the economic costs of the recession but these unmet psychological needs, such as loneliness, stress, frustration, feeling out of control, helpless, insecure and fearful are at least as widespread and corrosive in the UK as unmet material needs.
The Young Foundation’s Unmet and Emerging Needs programme sought to make sense of modern British society through the lens of unmet need and to provide organisations trying to meet need with new tools to help better allocate resources.
The programme combined a series of innovative theoretical frameworks and quantitative and qualitative research methods to assess the importance of different human needs, and explore how and how well they are currently met, with particular attention paid to the context of economic downturn. The interim report shares the findings of the first nine months of the programme.
Posted on: 30 January 2009