Unhappiness and stress do not lead to ill health, says study
Posted on: 16/Dec/2015 5:34:19 PM
According to a study published in The Lancet, happiness does not lead to a long and healthy life. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford. Happiness and related measures of well-being do not appear to have any direct effect on mortality, they say. (We) decided to look into the subject because there is a widespread belief that stress and unhappiness cause disease. Believing things that aren`t true isn`t a good idea. There are enough scare stories about health.
The study included a million women of ages between 50 and 69. The study was conducted from 1996 to 2001. The participants were tracked with questionnaires and official records of deaths and hospital admissions. The questionnaires included enquiries into the number of times the women felt happy, stressed, in control and relaxed. The questionnaires also had ratings of health. It asked details of ailments such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression or anxiety, arthritis and asthma. According to the results, unhappiness and stress were not associated with increased risk of health.
Says one of the researchers, Particularly important data came from 500,000 women who reported on their baseline surveys that they were in good health, with no history of heart disease, cancer, stroke or emphysema. A substantial minority of these healthy women said they were stressed or unhappy, but over the next decade they were no more likely to die than were the women who were generally happy. This finding refutes the large effects of unhappiness and stress on mortality that others have claimed. Unhappiness itself may not affect health directly, but it can do harm in other ways, by driving people to suicide, alcoholism or other dangerous behaviours.
