Over the course of his career, he has spent years caring for critically ill patients at the intersection of life, death, suffering, resilience, and hope — experiences that profoundly shaped the philosophy behind Happiness Deconstructed.
Across more than two decades of education, training, and clinical leadership, Hussein has worked at the intersection of medicine, critical care, resilience, suffering, and human behavior. Trained in medicine, public health, epidemiology, and critical care, he has worked across emergency medicine, cardiac care, transport and flight medicine, intensive care, and extracorporeal life support (ECMO/ECLS). He currently serves as Provincial Medical Director of Critical Care Medicine and has previously held appointments as an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia.
It was formed beside grieving families. Through conversations with patients confronting mortality. Through personal loss, fatherhood, failure, self-doubt, and the growing realization that modern life has fundamentally distorted our understanding of happiness, success, meaning, and worth.
A passionate reader of philosophy, psychology, Stoicism, Eastern thought, and human behavior, Hussein became increasingly drawn to a central question:
Why, despite unprecedented comfort, achievement, and connection, do so many people still feel anxious, restless, disconnected, or unfulfilled?
That question became the foundation of Happiness Deconstructed.
Drawing from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and deeply personal experiences, the book explores how modern culture conditions people toward endless striving, external validation, distraction, and disconnection from themselves.
At its core, this is not simply a book about happiness.
It is a book about awareness — about questioning inherited beliefs, unconscious narratives, and the patterns that quietly shape our lives.
Hussein writes not as someone who has mastered life, but as someone still learning, questioning, unlearning, and striving each day to live with greater presence, gratitude, authenticity, and purpose.