How friendship influences our happiness

Without your friends where would you be? Who would be there to tell you when that new haircut just doesn’t suit you? Who would point out that questionable eating habit your new partner has? And who would call you up at midnight needing counselling about what happened at work that day? Yes, you gotta have friends as according to a new study not only do they do things for you, but you can also catch your mood from them, but only in a positive way.

The study looked at data drawn from more than 2,000 teenagers and measured how they were influenced by each other’s moods. The participants were each classified as having depressive symptoms or not being depressed (healthy mood) according to scores achieved on mood testing.

In essence it appears that depressive moods are not transmitted from friends but positive mood is contagious.

Analysis of the data revealed that depression did not spread, that is, having a friend with depressive symptoms did not increase an individual’s likelihood of having depression. However, having friends with a positive healthy mood halved the likelihood of developing depression and doubled the likelihood of recovering from depression of you did develop it.

Specifically the study found that adolescents who have five or more mentally healthy friends have half the probability of becoming depressed compared to adolescents with no healthy friends. Additionally, teenagers with 10 healthy friends have double the chance of recovering from a depressive episode.

In essence it appears that depressive moods are not transmitted from friends but positive mood is contagious. If parents weren’t already eager to have their teenage children hanging out with the right crowd then this will just add fuel to that parental fir because having healthy friends is the best medicine in both ways; it is both preventative and curative.