Mindfully Healing

Why Americans are getting unhappier and the 10 happiest countries in the world. Norway is the happiest country in the world, closely followed by Denmark and Iceland. The United States, though, has become 5% unhappier over the past 10 years, despite people earning more money. The trend in happiness is the reverse for most countries, which have become happier. The US came 14th on the list and the United Kingdom ranked 19th. Canadians lived up to their reputation by ranking at number 7 on the list, while Australia came 9th.

Six months later, 80% had recovered from depression, researchers found. Rumination — thinking about the causes and consequences of depressing events — is common in depression. However, simply realising that you don’t have to ruminate can be liberating, new research suggests. When people learned to reduce how much they ruminated, 80% had recovered after six months (including 10 weeks of therapy). Professor Roger Hagen, who led the research, said: “Anxiety and depression give rise to difficult and painful negative thoughts. Many patients have thoughts of mistakes, past failures or other

How to get your brain to run more efficiently under stress. Writing about your feelings can help your brain work more efficiently, new research finds. For people who are chronic worriers, this method can help free up a lot of cognitive resources. Mr Hans Schroder, the study’s first author, said: “…it’s kind of like people who struggle with worry are constantly multitasking — they are doing one task and trying to monitor and suppress their worries at the same time. Our findings show that if you get these worries out