Many universities around the world teach psychology. It seems most of the attention goes to passing on knowledge about curing psychological problems and not that much to research into the causes that relate to how our society is organized. 

Why not create a “preventative socio-psychology” section?

• to examine why people have psychological problems – in many instances the expression of violence or frustration. Violence and frustration often generated by society indirectly and directly.
• to help the various sectors of our society to tackle the causes and to prevent problems from happening.
• to advise politicians, the media, educators, religious leaders… on taking actions to make our society less violent.
• to help people to better cope with violence – in themselves and in others (even at a very early age).

Many people today do not seem to fit in our society or feel that way. Many feel excluded from society. This often leads to violence in different forms or to discontent, burn-out, negative stress, suicide… The question is whether we need to try and “adapt” (those) people to society or whether we need to change society (that often demands too much and not always the right things)? 

We think too little effort is put into making society more “people-friendly” and more peaceful.

Boys don’t cry

Danellandia (www.danellandia.org) is a project of peace and humanity. We try to look into many different aspects of life, society, Nature… from the perspective of human values. We are convinced that the promotion of human values in all sectors of society, starting from the first years of education, would make society less hard on many people and less violent.

“Boys have to be tough”, “boys do not cry”… are generally accepted as truths, but are they really and do they need to be?

We think psychology could make a substantial contribution towards changing society for the better by helping to boost the general appreciation of human values and by making society more aware about how it affects the psychological (and physical) health of its members. 

Not being lived but live

People should be able to live (and enjoy life) and should not to be lived by a society that is too demanding and too confusing, nor by the media that often put up an ideal image that influences people’s self-esteem and that most people cannot achieve. It often makes them feel frustrated or dissatisfied with themselves (often the reason for psychological tension and even illnesses).

We hope psychologists or anyone else will take the time to visit our website (that is still being expanded) and that maybe some will be inspired to go for a kind of psychology that helps to transform our society and reduce the number of psychological problems.