{"id":1170,"date":"2008-01-31T20:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-01T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2008-01-31T20:50:57","modified_gmt":"2008-02-01T01:50:57","slug":"cranky-for-a-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1170","title":{"rendered":"Cranky for a reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

And you wonder why Mr. Crankypants is cranky? Because he’s 48, that’s why. A University of Warwick professor has done research showing that simply being middle-aged is depressing:<\/p>\n

Using data 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 that leaves us most miserable in middle age…. The researchers found happiness levels followed a U shaped curve, with happiness higher towards the start and end of our lives and leaving us most miserable in middle age….<\/p>\n

For the average person in the modern world, the dip in mental health and happiness comes on slowly, not suddenly in a single year. Only in their 50s do most people emerge from the low period. But encouragingly, by the time you are 70, if you are still physically fit then on average you are as happy and mentally healthy as a 20 year old. Link to press release<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This news bit comes via Will Shetterly<\/a>, whose commenters point out that for some of us middle-aged folk, age 20 sucked too. For his part, Mr. C. wonders if the average 20 year old just doesn’t have enough experience to realize how depressing the world is — never questioning why it is we are all in this handbasket, nor asking where it is we are all going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And you wonder why Mr. Crankypants is cranky? Because he’s 48, that’s why. A University of Warwick professor has done research showing that simply being middle-aged is depressing: Using data 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}