A new study disproves the belief that unhappiness has a direct effect on a person’s health, so there is no connection between happiness and quality of life. The researchers took data from the Million Woman Study conducted in the UK, which was conducted between 1996 to 2001.
Happiness Has No Relation to Disease or Early Death
The research initially assumed that people with the disease would report a higher amount of unhappiness, which was commonly associated with loneliness, lack of exercise and smoking. It was reported that women who get 8 hours of sleep or more are likelier to be happy.
Ten years later, though, the data didn’t look the same. 4% of the 32,000 who died after the study were not unhappier. Upon closer examination of the data, it turned out that women who were rated as unhappy died at the same rate as those who were happy. This included all kinds of death, related to disease or not.
Illness Makes People Unhappy, But Unhappiness Doesn’t Make People Ill
There were no direct links found between unhappiness and illness, not even in the ten-year study. Researchers claim that the connection stems only from a confusion of cause and effect. The study, extensive as it was, definitely eliminates unhappiness as being a cause of the increase in mortality for women.
Obviously, more research is needed to truly confirm this. There are always skeptics, even in this respect. There is some vagueness in the study itself since unhappiness and happiness are things that can’t be measured exactly. Further study could give the community more concrete hope. Though there’s no telling if a shorter study will truly bring the concrete results people are expecting. It’s also worth noting that the study focused on unhappiness, which probably should not be confused with depression. There will probably be more studies conducted in this respect, perhaps incorporating more demographics and all genders.
