Did anyone see Good Morning America this morning? They had a brief news item on midlife crisis. I couldn't find the story on their website, but found it elsewhere from a google search.
Here it is:
Quote:
Middle-Aged Misery: A Common Pattern 29/01/2008
The mid-life crisis is not a myth; new global research reveals that we're most depressed in our forties.
In a massive study using information on 2 million people, from 80 nations, researchers from the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College in the US have found an extraordinarily consistent international pattern in depression and happiness levels.
The researchers found that happiness levels actually follow a U shaped curve, with happiness highest towards the start and end of our lives and leaving us most miserable in middle age. Many previous studies had assumed that psychological well-being stayed relatively flat and consistent as we aged.
Using a sample of 1 million people from the UK, the researchers discovered that for both men and women, the probability of depression peaks around 44 years of age. In the US, however, they found a significant difference between men and women with unhappiness reaching a peak at around 40 years of age for women and 50 years of age for men.
They found the same U-shape in happiness levels and life satisfaction by age for 72 other countries, both developed and developing.
The researchers believe that the U-shaped effect stems from something inside human beings. They show that signs of mid-life depression are found in all kinds of people; it is not caused by having young children in the house, by divorce, or by changes in jobs or income.
"Some people suffer more than others but in our data the average effect is large," said researcher professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick. "It happens to men and women, to single and married people, to rich and poor, and to those with and without children. Nobody knows why we see this consistency."
He says that one possibility is that people learn to adapt to their strengths and weaknesses, and in mid-life are finally forced to let go of their unfeasible aspirations. Another possibility is that cheerful people live systematically longer, and a third possibility is that people learn to count their blessings as they get older, perhaps from seeing people of a similar age to them dying, making them value their own remaining years more.
I thought this was interesting because my H dropped the bomb the day after his 44th birthday.
Now, if only the article would tell us when to expect this all to end......
