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Happiness

Updated on 5th January 2008 by Dr Charles Tweed

"Don’t worry, be happy" [Bobby McFerrin]

It might seem ridiculous to try to encourage you to be happy, but it is surprisingly important. Firstly, if you can be happy then life is worth living and it is worth trying to have a longer life. Secondly, happiness has significant health benefits. Achieving happiness is harder to do, but there are some simple steps that we can all take that will help us achieve it.

The good news is we tend to get happier as we get older. The peak age for depressive episodes is the mid - late forties. Thereafter the smiles get broader and more frequent... until we lose either our partner or our independence.

Studies in the elderly confirm what would appear to be common sense – people who are happy want to carry on living; people who are unhappy do not. There is also a clear association between happiness and independence, social involvement, mobility and general health.

Being depressed was a strong predictor of being unable to perform cognitive and basic activities that are necessary to self care and maintain independence.

It has been well known for many years that people with depression have poorer health than the rest of the population. They have more heart disease, high blood pressure and indeed cancers. Some of this is no doubt related to the higher rate of smoking amongst depressed people, but if you apply some nifty statistical and epidemiological tricks it is possible to tease out the facts and discover that some of it is indeed due to the depression itself. Possibly part of the reason that their health indicators are poorer is due to how depressed people respond to stressful stimuli. Some elegant experiments have been done looking at biological markers of health and people’s mood. They measured how people’s pulse, blood pressure, fibrinogen (a clotting factor) and cortisol (stress hormone) levels change during the course of the day and in relation to various tasks that are designed to be stressful. In happy people, all of these parameters were significantly lower. Many other experiments have shown biological changes that are produced from laughter and happiness that are known to be beneficial: a higher pain threshold, improved survival in cancer, lower blood pressure and lower cortisol levels.

Achieving happiness is rather more complicated. It appears that humans are bad at making choices they think will make them happy. Not only are we bad at it, we also think we are good at it and do not seem to have much capacity to learn how to make good choices. All is not lost however. There are certain things you may want to know before you start making lifestyle choices and rash decisions.

Money does not make you happy. Actually money does improve your quality of life and happiness but only up to the level where the basics to sustain life without undue difficulty are reached: shelter, food and water and the ability to provide for your family. This is reached with an income of approximately US$10,000. Thereafter happiness is poorly correlated with income.

It appears status is the next aspect of money that improves our happiness; if everyone else is as rich as us we don’t get happier as we get richer – it is only if we get richer than others that we get happier (what a shallow lot we are).

Experiences bring happiness, toys do not. Some research done in Scandinavia looked at what people spent their money on and their reported levels of happiness. It seems that concrete items that people spent money on only produce a transient increase in happiness. Buying that new Rolex or Aston Martin brings a sharp spike in pleasure that is intense but rapidly returns to the normal resting level particular to that person.

Money spent on experiences brought a lesser peak of happiness but one that lasted much longer and even increased the resting level of happiness particular to that person. It may be that the ability to return to the event in one’s memory is a powerful promoter of happiness.

Clearly, the pursuit of wealth for it’s own sake is unlikely to make you much happier, but if you can manage to get it and spend it on experiences – you might be happier than if you had not spent the time chasing wealth and had different experiences with the time you spent chasing wealth. Probably.

Family are important. Survival in mammals and humans is directly linked to the ability to have social interaction. In its most basic form, a rat given plenty of food and water and possibly even some interesting toys, will not survive as long as rats which are kept with other rats. As humans, we need social interaction and family provide a large part of this, particularly as we get older. Married or partnered people have greater health scores (and happiness scores) than single people. It also seems to be important to have a sense of belonging and community which is again, intrinsically linked to having a family around you.

Interaction with your community is also important. Though similar it is not identical to the above point. Spinsters who are actively involve with their community, and nuns, are two cases in point in that they have better survival curves than the general population even corrected for lifestyle differences. Most studies have looked at church as the community activity, so it could be that having faith is also an important factor.

Making decisions about the future is an area fraught with difficulties and if you wish to know more on this subject, and for an amusing read, we suggest you read Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. We can assure you this is no self-help manual that exhorts you to begin the rest of your life…

A large amount of research is directed at trying to work out if you can change your underlying level of character to bring happiness. Certainly avoiding substance abuse and abusive relationships, being employed and regular exercise seem to well-proven things that an individual can change. Whether you can teach yourself to have a positive attitude, or to be optimistic, remains to be seen.

Lastly, we all have ups and downs, good days and bad. But if you do have problems with depression it is then often a treatable or manageable condition. The most difficult bit is realising you can do something about it.