More happiness may come with age, studies say

"A Pew Research Center study found that the happiest men are ages 60 to 69, while the least happy are ages 20 to 29.

With the exception of those with age-dementia, mental health tends to improve as people get older, researchers said at the APA meeting."

From CNN article by Elizabeth Landau, More happiness may come with age, studies say, published August 11, 2009.

Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop

"Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating.

"Moreover, the rats’ behavioral perturbations were reflected by a pair of complementary changes in their underlying neural circuitry. On the one hand, regions of the brain associated with executive decision-making and goal-directed behaviors had shriveled, while, conversely, brain sectors linked to habit formation had bloomed.

From The New York Times. August 17, 2009. Whole article here.