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- Title
Health and happiness in young Swiss adults.
- Authors
Perneger, Thomas V.; Hudelson, Patricia M.; Bovier, Patrick A.
- Abstract
<bold>Purpose: </bold>To explore whether self-reported happiness is associated with mental and physical health status among young adults.<bold>Methods: </bold>Cross-sectional survey of 1257 randomly selected university students in Geneva, Switzerland. The questionnaire included an item that probed the feeling of happiness in the past month, the Short Form-12 health survey (from which mental and physical health scores were computed), scales to measure self-esteem, stress, and social support, reports of various life problems, and sociodemographic information.<bold>Results: </bold>Most participants felt happy all of the time or most of the time (63%). In multivariate analysis, feeling happy all or most of the time was strongly associated with better mental health (odds ratios for consecutive quartiles of mental health scores: 1.0 (reference), 6.8 (95% confidence interval (CI): 4.5-10.1), 19.2 (95% CI: 12.2-30.2), 39.9 (95% CI: 22.4-71.0)), but also with the feeling of getting enough love and affection (item from the social support scale, odds ratio: 1.9; 95% CI: 1.4-2.7), female sex (odds ratio: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.1-2.1), being Swiss (odds ratio: 1.8; 95% CI: 1.3-2.5), and higher self-esteem (odds ratios for consecutive quartiles ranged from 1.0 to 3.5, 95% CI: 2.1-5.8). The association between happiness and physical health was weak and statistically non-significant.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The strong association between happiness and mental health suggests that asking people if they are happy may help identify mental health care needs. Self-reported happiness may also be a useful outcome measure for evaluation of health interventions.
- Subjects
SWITZERLAND; HAPPINESS; MENTAL health; HEALTH; ADULTS; LOVE; SELF-esteem; MEDICAL care; COMPARATIVE studies; HEALTH status indicators; RESEARCH methodology; MEDICAL cooperation; QUESTIONNAIRES; RESEARCH; SELF-evaluation; SELF-perception; SEX distribution; PSYCHOLOGICAL stress; STUDENTS; UNIVERSITIES &; colleges; LOGISTIC regression analysis; SOCIAL support; EVALUATION research; CROSS-sectional method
- Publication
Quality of Life Research, 2004, Vol 13, Issue 1, p171
- ISSN
0962-9343
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1023/B:QURE.0000015314.97546.60