What's the secret to health and happiness? For some, it's an optimistic outlook. Others might say your experiences matter, or perhaps your personality is paramount.<\/p>\n
There is no single formula, but in recent decades, positive psychology has increasingly focused on a theory of well-being that encompasses the quality of our lives, our sense of purpose and meaning, our personal environment, and our relationships with others.<\/p>\n
Numerous studies have shown that positive well-being is associated with significant improvements in health and life expectancy and can help protect mental health, including reducing the risk of depression.<\/p>\n
But while we understand much about well-being, we also don't know much, including how it develops over the years. Does well-being change over decades, or is it a fixed psychological baseline that persists into the future?<\/p>\n
The truth is, we don't really know, as previous research offers mixed views that don't always agree with each other.<\/p>\n
\u00abThe extent to which adults maintain psychological well-being across decades, and the role of depression in shaping these trajectories, remains poorly understood,\u00bb psychologists explain in a new study published in the journal Nature Mental Health<\/em> , authored by pioneering mental health researcher Cassondra Lyman of Cornell University.<\/p>\n \u00abSurprisingly, very little is known about what factors predict the achievement of high levels of well-being over decades.\u00bb.<\/p>\n Researchers found that well-being can change over time and is more likely to improve if well-being is low. (maks_d\/Unsplash)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n To examine how well-being might change over time and how it interacts with depression, Lyman and her co-authors analyzed data from 2,420 participants in the Changing Lives of Americans study, a longitudinal study of a nationally representative cohort that began in 1986 with 3,617 adults.<\/p>\n Tracking a variety of measures, including life satisfaction, emotional well-being, self-acceptance, sense of control, and positive relationships, the researchers found that participants' well-being underwent four distinct changes over 25 years.<\/p>\n For most participants in the analysis, about 60 percent, levels of well-being generally remained stable over time.<\/p>\n People in this group tended to report moderate levels of well-being at baseline, and these levels remained relatively stable, but it's worth noting that stable well-being does not mean high levels \u2013 about a quarter of the group maintained consistently low levels of well-being.<\/p>\n The next largest group included about 30 percent of the participants, people who began the study with low levels of well-being but showed gradual improvement over time.<\/p>\n The third group, representing about 8 percent of the population, initially had a high level of well-being, which then declined sharply and then stabilized.<\/p>\n The final segment, representing only about 2 percent of the total group, started with very low levels of well-being but then showed significant improvement, although half of this group failed to sustain their gains in well-being, which declined over time.<\/p>\n Overall, the researchers found that people's level of well-being at baseline was the strongest predictor of whether their well-being would change direction (i.e., from high to low or vice versa).<\/p>\n \u00ab"People with lower baseline well-being were more likely to experience improvements in well-being, and people with higher baseline depressive symptoms were more likely to experience changes in well-being," the researchers wrote.<\/p>\n \u00ab"Thus, people with low well-being and elevated depressive symptoms at baseline had the highest chance of experiencing significant improvements in well-being.".<\/p>\n See also:<\/strong> A biological mechanism linking childhood trauma to future health has been discovered.<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the most promising findings of the study, especially for people with depression, is that well-being can improve over time, and in fact, the likelihood of this happening is higher if your well-being is low.<\/p>\n Among study participants, 57 percent of people who reported low well-being and elevated depressive symptoms at baseline reported improved well-being over the 25-year follow-up.<\/p>\n As for next steps, the researchers suggest that identifying people's well-being trajectories could help identify when therapeutic interventions might benefit them, serving as a sort of screening tool for choosing future treatments.<\/p>\n The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Mental Health<\/em> .<\/p>\n ScienceAlert articles are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans; they are never generated by artificial intelligence. Don't miss a single article; subscribe here.<\/p>\n People who live to 100 years and older have a surprisingly large number of immune cells that destroy cancer cells.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Scientists have discovered a new organ hidden in the skull.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n For the first time, a link has been established between the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and stomach cancer.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What's the secret to health and happiness? For some, it's an optimistic outlook. Others might say it's your experiences that matter, or perhaps your personality that matters most\u2026.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","hvn-theme-has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20684"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162201,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20684\/revisions\/162201"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imgist.ru\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Related news<\/h3>\n
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