Now here’s an interesting thing: It’s official happiness resumes at fifty cites research that seems to show that depression hits (reaches? /sinks to?) it’s worst at age forty four-obviously that is a mean (very mean) average. It says that we are at our happiest and most optimisitc in our twenties and then again in our seventies. In our twenties we are energetic, youthful and life is ahead of us-but in our seventies? This seems a mystery.

The article talks about acceptance but in Elkohonon Goldberg’s book The wisdom Paradox: How your mind can grow stronger as your brain grows older he looks at how the structure of the brain alters as we age.

According to Goldberg (who is a world respected neuroscientist) the left hemisphere becomes more dominant than the right. Negative emotions are associated with right hemispheric activity and diminished left side activity-which is why depressed people have much more activation on their right sides and reduced on the left. This is also why stroke victims who have left side damaged may be subsequently more disturbed and unhappy than ones who have right side damage.

As we age the right shrinks much quicker than the left side making us naturally get happier as we grow older which kind of works as a natural compensation for aging. It seems that all emotional disorders from depression to schizophrenia and alcoholism naturally diminish in their severity through time because of this brain structural effect.

So we can all look forward to the years ahead

Mark