Happiness is Right Outside
[Photo by Drawings of Light]
Just having a break from work is not enough suggests new research, it is activities in the open air which have the strongest restorative effects on our mental states.Everyone gets down sometimes - it's only natural. It would be more unusual never to be depressed. The idea that depression is an on-off condition with a purely chemical foundation is a myth no psychologist would endorse. The causes of depression can be many and widespread. But one cause many of us have to cope with is work.
One of the main weapons against stress building up from work is going on vacation. Holidays are a firmly established way of allowing the mind and body to recuperate. In new research, however, published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Hartig, Catalano and Ong (2007) find that all holidays are not created equal.
Getting out in the open
The lead author of this paper, Terry Hartig, lives and works in Sweden, a country well known for its long, dark winters. As such, the Swedes know the importance of getting out in the sunshine, when it finally arrives. There is even a law requiring employers to provide four consecutive weeks of holiday in the summer. And it's actually this law that is crucial to Hartig et al's findings.Hartig and colleagues suggest that being stuck indoors on vacation can limit mental recuperation. On the other hand, when able to roam outdoors, we can exert ourselves at a favourite sport or simply linger in the park. Psychologically, beautiful scenery can distract us from our troubles, help us forget our normal stressful environments and reconnect us to nature.
This is a nice theory that is intuitively attractive and plausible. The problem is how to test it scientifically.
Anti-depressant prescriptions and the weather
Hartig et al. decided to use the number of SSRI anti-depressants prescribed between 1991 and 1998 as a proxy for the general level of depression in the population of Sweden. They then looked for correlations between the weather and the amount of anti-depressants prescribed, which they duly found.Wait, though, there's a problem with this. Perhaps people are simply happier when the weather is warmer? It would then follow there would be an association between anti-depressant prescriptions and temperature.
Hartig et al. anticipated this problem. They remove the variation in anti-depressant prescriptions associated with the general change in monthly mean temperature from the equation. Then they get a really interesting finding. Now there's only a correlation between temperature and anti-depressant medications in one month: July. There's no similar effect even for the adjacent months of June or August.
How can that be explained? Why would the relationship only occur in July?
Why July is unusual
Here is the authors' reasoning. In Sweden people take most of their holiday in July at the centre of the period stipulated by law (from 1 June to 31 August). A survey found it is over 90%. This means that during July they have the highest likelihood of being free to enjoy outdoor pursuits. On average, the rest of the year they will be working, so even if the weather is unseasonably warm in May, for example, they won't be able to take advantage of it.The reasoning goes, then, that if the weather is bad in July people are stuck indoors. This means they are unable to fully recuperate mentally before returning to work. Alternately, if the weather is good in July people are, on average, mentally rested and have less need for medication.
Remember that this explanation relies on averaging out many people's behaviour across nine years. Obviously not everyone requires anti-depressants to get through a spell of bad weather. Similarly some people require them whatever the weather. But think about it in terms of the people who are slipping across the boundary of requiring/asking for medication. Then the authors' explanation makes sense.
Happiness is...
I know this study falls into the category of telling us something we already know. But it does so in rather an ingenious way that takes advantage of Swedish vacation patterns. Also, we can't be reminded often enough that we should take every opportunity to get out in the open air.Truly, happiness is looking out across fresh fields, gazing at a distant tree, feeling the sun on your back and the wind brushing your skin.
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References - Click here to toggle visibilityLabels: Depression, Environment, Happiness
4 comments
Interesting, but....
My understanding of anti-depressants is that:
a) once you are on them, you stay on them. An on-off-on-off regimen of antidepressants is quite dangerous, and;
b) there is a lag time between the time one experiences clinical depression, when one is diagnosed with clinical depression, and when antidepressants actually start kicking in.
To suggest that all that happens in the time span of 30 days seems a stretch.
Without having read the study, the first alternative explanation that comes to mind is that fewer prescriptions were filled in July because when the weather was warmer because they were more likely to be on vacation, and away from their physician...
Just a wild guess... I'll have to check it out when I have some free time.
Dr G:
(a) The authors aren't necessarily suggesting people are going on and off anti-depressants. Rather, for some people, July is the straw that broke the camel's back.
(b) Yes, I think this is a bit of a problem. The authors don't really address this solidly. Following on from (a) though if you buy the 'straw' theory perhaps it's more plausible.
Here's a quote on that covers these two points:
"...the people who were likely to cause increases in our DDD measure were those who were already receiving treatment for depression (and who needed increases in doses) or those who were depressed and need something to tip them over the edge to get diagnosed and treated. The Swedish medical system allows relatively easy access to primary care, so the lag between when an individual wants to consult a physician and dispensation of the prescribed drug need not be long. Lags of some weeks duration would be captured with our monthly DDD and temperature data as analyzed here, but longer lags would not." (Hartig et al., p. 114).
The vacation theory is a good alternative explanation - and one the authors consider. Hartig et al. argue people on anti-depressants planning a holiday will have stocked up well before they go away on vacation.
The other alternative the authors mention which I like is that people are depressed because their kids are home from school and stuck inside as the weather is bad! But, Hartig et al. argue, parents might not face any greater stress because their kids are stuck in the house than if they can roam free. Also, what percentage of the sample have children? We don't know.
Anti-depressant medications are not meant to be taken forever, but are usually understood to be an adjunct to "talking" therapy/counseling. When cognitive and behavioral strategies are used in counseling in conjunction with the correct anti-depressant medication, the current understanding is that many people can be on the medication while the internal changes are being cultivated and the individual's coping mechanisms are strengthened, then the medication can be tapered in many cases. The idea is the emotional/cognitive "basement" - the most severe symptoms of clinical depression - is elevated during counseling while on medication, a test taper of the medication can be done to evaluate the efficacy of this psychological treatment/healing, and the med. either restarted or discontinued, based on the individual's response to all of the therapies employed in the effective treatment of clinical depression.
Pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe one must be on these meds forever, and some people need to be on them for the entirety of their lives. However, many individuals have successfully used the progressive method above with a return to a more robust state of psychological health.
Researchers Jess Alberts and Angela Threthewey explain in their article "Love, Honor, and Thanks" (Featured in the Summer Issue of Greater Good magazine) how gratitude can reduce a couples' conflicts around housework and make relationships more satisfying in the process, removing forms of depression and brining about happiness.
Moreover, Robert Emmons, perhaps the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude explains in his article "Pay It Forward" why Americans typically underestimate the importance of gratitude, and discusses surprising and encouraging results that he's uncovered, outlining gratitude's positive impact on people's emotional, social, and physical health.
These articles provide readers with solutions to obtain happiness.
The Emmons article can be found at:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/current_issue/emmons.html
and the Alberts artilce:http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/greatergood/current_issue/alberts.html