Believe it or not, middle age makes you miserable. So, don’t blame your job,
your kids, your spouse, your income or lack of it. A team of researchers from
Britain and the United States has carried out a study and found that people are
more likely to feel depressed in their mid-life, with the peak age for
depression being about 44.

In
fact, according to the researchers, happiness and depression follows a U-shape
over a person’s lifetime with the happiest times being at the start and end of
life.

"You would expect people
to get unhappier as they get closer to death but the opposite appears to be the
case. People’s levels of happiness and mental health are lowest in their
mid-lives. It is a mystery why this happens but the evidence is incredibly
strong.

"The average, normal
person experiences a kind of mid-life crisis in terms of happiness and mental
health," lead researcher Prof Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick was
quoted by

The Daily
Telegraph

as saying.

Prof Oswald and his fellow
researchers from Dartmouth College in America came to the conclusion after
analysing data from over two million people from 80 countries.

The team found that happiness
was U-shaped over life, bottoming out in middle age. The pattern was repeated in
the developing world.

Via Times of India