The effect was so powerful that having a network of upbeat friends doubled the odds of recovering from depression. Professor Frances Griffiths worked on the study, and he is the head of social science and systems in health at Warwick Medical School University of Warwick. The researchers found out that if teenagers have friends, they can end up recovering from depression or avoid the depression all together in the first place. The model suggests that teens with five or more happy friends have half the probability of suffering from depression over a six to 12-month period than teens without no “healthy mood” friends. Teenagers with 10 healthy friends had double the chances of recovering from depression as those who had only 3 friends, the researchers said.
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Researchers examined data from over 2,000 teenagers who had reported their network of friendships and answered questions about their levels of happiness as part of an earlier research project.
A happy healthy mood has been found to be contagious in social circles and can even help cure depression according to new research carried out by the University of Warwick and Manchester. Based on the survey results, the scientists classified each student into either a “low mood” (depressed) category a or “healthy mood” (not depressed) category. “This would reduce the prevalence of depression”.
Researchers know that social factors, for example living alone or having experienced abuse in childhood, influences whether someone becomes depressed. Of course, if you notice that a friend of your child is seeming very depressed or your child tells you that the friend said they were going to commit suicide, then that is definitely something you need to take seriously.
An article describing study results, “Spreading of healthy mood in adolescent social networks”, has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
These results suggested having healthy friends is both protective and curative.
This is important as there is stigma attached to being depressed. “More work needs to be done but it may that we could significantly reduce the burden of depression through cheap, low-risk social interventions”, House said.
“As a society, if we enable friendships to develop among adolescents (for example providing youth clubs) each adolescent is more likely to have enough friends with healthy mood to have a protective effect”.
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Edward Hill, an applied mathematician who collaborated on the study, said: “We’ve ensured that the method we used was not confounded by homophily – that is the tendency for people to be friends with others like themselves”.
