PhD defence Y.K. (Plato) Leung

Dissertation in short:

The topic of mental health has attracted much attention from practitioners and policy makers in the last few decades. Major initiatives include the Mental Health Action Plan initiated by the World Health Organization; the inclusion of national mental health indicators in countries such as Bhutan, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Iceland; the neurodiversity hiring programs rolled out by large corporates such as IBM and JP Morgan Chase & Co.  

The emerging interests in mental health can be attributed to four main reasons: i) the improvement of living and economic conditions, ii) the positive association between well-being and a wide range of individual, organizational, and economic outcomes, iii) the popularity and societal burden of mental health issues, and iv) the failure of economic growth in predicting well-being (i.e., money can’t bring you happiness). 

Despite growing attention to mental health, research on the link between mental health and entrepreneurs is still in its infancy. Given the well-known contributions of entrepreneurship in today’s society, the implication of entrepreneurship on individual and societal well-being looms large and warrants further attention. 

By combining insights from psychology and methodologies from economic research, this dissertation seeks to contribute to this emerging field of research in entrepreneurship by shedding light on four overarching research questions on the triangulated relationship among sub-clinical psychiatric symptoms, well-being, and entrepreneurship.