What Is Languishing and Does It Affect You?
There’s more to mental health than you might think
Let’s be honest. When we talk about mental health, we mostly talk about the lack of it. When we think about mental health, we automatically think of mental illness. Well, turns out that a lack of mental health and the presence of mental illness are not the same thing.
Sociologist and psychologist Corey Keyes first described the absence of mental health as languishing. He also described it in a more visual way:
A state in which an individual is devoid of positive emotion toward life, and is not functioning well either psychologically or socially. (…) In short, languishers are neither mentally ill nor mentally healthy.
Sounds enticing, doesn’t it?
Commonly, one would think of a one-dimensional scale with mental illness on one end and mental health on the other. Keyes instead proposes a model that includes mental health and mental illness as two largely separate (if partially interdependent) dimensions, which means that the absence of an actual clinically relevant diagnosis such as depression or anxiety does not automatically imply psychological well-being.
Measuring mental health
Keyes developed a scale that measures mental health, specifically. Just as we would mental illness. On the lower end of that scale lies languishing.
Ask yourself:
- Do you feel satisfied with your life?
- Does the way that our society works make sense to you?
- Are the relationships with people around you as close and comforting as you would like them to be?
Did you answer those questions with an enthusiastic yes? If not, chances are you might actually be languishing. And you’re definitely not alone.
Let’s think back to what first inspired me to write about all of this: Adam Grant’s NYT article on languishing. He mentions that dissatisfaction with our own lives, confusion about how to adjust to the new normal and a lack of human contact as we know it are important characteristics of that quarantine lifestyle we are all pretty much fed up with.
If, on the other hand, you happen to be one of the lucky ones whose answers lie on the positive end of the scale, you might be considered flourishing. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, who worked with Keyes, wrote:
To flourish is to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.
People who flourish mostly experience positive emotions, feel like their life has purpose and direction, and are also satisfied with their interpersonal relationships. They are also less prone to mental as well as physical illness.
Why languishing matters
Here’s the kicker: analyzing data points from a cross-sectional study ten years apart, Keyes and his colleagues showed that languishing is not just kind of annoying and tiring. It also has its risks.
A decline of mental health into languishing as well as staying in a stagnating languishing state over time were more indicative of mental illness than an actual diagnosis of mental illness ten years prior. Conversely, maintaining as well as gaining higher levels of mental health seemed to constitute a protective resource for recovery from mental illness.
All in all, if you are languishing right now, you are at a higher risk of developing a mental disorder later on. This may be explained by the fact that a slow but steady decline in mental health goes unnoticed for a long time. As the boiling frog syndrome describes, you’ll sometimes tend to stay in increasingly adverse circumstances for way too long, if only those circumstances develop gradually enough.
In comparison, a sudden drop into major depression or the abrupt onset of panic attacks will most likely get picked up more quickly by the person affected as well as their surroundings. Being aware of the problem at hand in the first place is a prerequisite for seeking treatment.
The researchers found that about 17% of the participants fell into the languishing category, making it almost as common as anxiety disorders in the US, which constitute the most common group of mental disorders. On the other end of the spectrum, almost 20% of study participants would be considered flourishing.
Curiously, these percentages seemed to be stable over time: on an individual level, some people might improve from languishing to moderate mental health or even flourishing, or the other way round. The overall numbers remained the same.
What should we do?
In the study’s conclusion, Keyes and his colleagues called for the active promotion of positive mental health in order to prevent mental illness.
According to large population studies, almost 40% of Europeans, as well as one in five adults in the US suffer from mental illness each year. Talking about mental health as well as getting treatment are still sensitive topics in the public eye. But at least this is something that a lot of people are aware of.
When it comes to languishing and its risks, I was taken aback by the fact that, as a clinical psychologist, I had not heard of this concept before. Flourishing as well as promoting positive mental health was something that got casually mentioned at some point during my studies, but that was it.
So how come this important risk factor for mental illness that is present in one in six people is not on clinical psychology’s radar? Especially now during the pandemic languishing rates might have climbed even higher, making it more of a pressing issue. We need to talk about this. So that’s exactly what I will do in my next article. Stay tuned!
