Happiness is being young or old, but middle age is misery
People are most likely to become depressed in middle age, according to a worldwide study of happiness. The team of economists leading the work found that we are happiest towards the beginning and end of our lives, leaving us most miserable in middle years between 40 and 50.
bugger eh ? British and middle aged. I'm stuffed. keep to the Fen Causeway
Now economists do sociology and psychology too? I´ll wait for friedman to write the horrorscopes.
Don´t let the turkeys get you down! Our knowledge has surpassed our wisdom. -Charu Saxena.
Poor bloody economists, scorned for a narrow vision of what life is all about, when some try looking at such important things as happiness - they get jeered at for stepping outside their academic niche. It only says they "led" it, and it seems to have involved collating lots of surveys done by others, so not really outside their competence, and evidently the academic journal judged that it was worth publishing:
The results, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, showed that people's levels of happiness followed a U-shaped curve, a pattern that was remarkably consistent in the vast majority of countries the researchers looked at, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. ... Andrew Oswald, from the University of Warwick, and David Blanchflower, from Dartmouth College in the US, led a study of more than 2 million people from 80 countries to find if happiness was related to age.
The results, published in the journal Social Science & Medicine, showed that people's levels of happiness followed a U-shaped curve, a pattern that was remarkably consistent in the vast majority of countries the researchers looked at, from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe.
...
Andrew Oswald, from the University of Warwick, and David Blanchflower, from Dartmouth College in the US, led a study of more than 2 million people from 80 countries to find if happiness was related to age.
Perhaps realising that such feelings are completely normal in mid-life might even help individuals survive this phase better.
Hold on, good times are coming - if you last that long - maybe cut down on the beer :-) As for the British part - that IS a problem - but moving abroad can help. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Every cloud has a silver lining...
Great.
And I'm entirely too contaminated with blokishness to feel smug on that score.
Darn, where's that Exit website ? keep to the Fen Causeway
For both men and women in the UK, the probability of depression peaked at around the age of 44.
So when I go in to see my employer about being off work due to anxiety, the fact that I'm 44 should be reason enough? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
