Claire with an unwanted baby; Locke without a true family; Jack without the respect of his father; Hurley with abandonment issues; Kate with alleged abuse issues.
If LOST itself was one big, tortured group therapy session to end manic depression, well, there is a little science that would back up that point.
Happiness not only spreads, it could actually help prevent depression, according to a new study.
Depression is not contagious, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. Happiness, however, is more likely to spread between friends, and the
results from the study may help remove some of the stigma surrounding
depression.
The World Health Organization estimates that 350 million people
are currently living with depression. Preliminary studies have now shown that social support and friendships may be a major factor in lifting people out of depressive states. A detailed study shows some empirical
evidence that happiness is contagious, and that those who befriend
depressed people are not in danger of becoming depressed themselves.
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. Based on the survey results, the
scientists classified each student into either a “low mood” (depressed)
category a or “healthy mood” (not depressed) category. Then, they mapped
out friendships and ran computer simulations to determine whether
happiness and sadness spread between friends like an infectious disease.
The conclusion that depression is not contagious is supportive. However, some people can still be uncomfortable or get down around a depressed friend of relative. Who has not been around a party pooper?
Meanwhile, happiness not only spreads—it may prevent (and even help
people recover from) depression. 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. And adolescents with 10 healthy friends have more than
double the probability of recovering from depressive symptoms.
“This
was a big effect that we have seen here,” said Thomas House,
mathematics professor at the University of Manchester and coauthor on
the study.
“It could be that having a stronger social network [the real-life
version, not Facebook] is an effective way to treat depression.”
Since
the study suggests teens are not at risk of “catching” depression from
their friends, and having happy friends may prevent and even pull teens
out of depression, House and his colleagues stress that it is important
to promote any friendship between adolescents. Friendship is a win-win,
the study says—it can’t hurt, but it may be both protective and
curative.
“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,” House said in a
prepared statement. “This would reduce the prevalence of depression.”
One of the true lessons of the LOST series was the importance of people finding the bonds of true friendships. It changed people's lives. It allowed them to move past the baggage of their prior lives, to set a path for a better self and better future.
