This Valentine’s Day, are you ready for something real or still playing the field? New research suggests your friends probably share similar notions about your readiness for lasting love. Researchers at Michigan State University in East Lansing tracked data on nearly 800 young adults embedded in friend groups.   Participants answered questions about their own readiness for a relationship, how ready they thought their various friends were, and each friend’s “attachment style.” Attachment styles can be secure or insecure, the researchers explained. Someone with an insecure attachment style typically has higher levels of anxiety and/or avoidance. According to the study, friends tended to agree as to whether a particular member of the group was ready for a solid relationship or not.   If a friend wasn’t thought to be ready, they were often perceived to have an insecure attachment style. “Friendships affect so many parts of our life — not just our health and happiness, but also our romantic prospects. Friends can constrain or facilitate who we date. They can also help our romantic relationships flourish or subtly and not-so-subtly undermine them,” study co-author William Chopik, associate professor of psychology at the university, said. He believes that friends’ “judgments of readiness likely explain all sorts of reasons why friends help and hurt our chances of finding love.” Chopik and co-author Hyewon Yang hope the study…  read on >  read on >

Even if a teen is at a healthy weight, just thinking they are overweight can greatly raise their odds for self-harm, a new study finds. “What we found was that the perception of being overweight has a much stronger effect of suicidal ideation than the objective measure of weight,” said study lead author Philip Baiden. He’s associate professor of social work at the University of Texas at Arlington. In the study, Baiden and colleagues looked at 2015-2021 data on more than 39,000 U.S. teens, ages 14 to 18, collected by surveys conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  Some of the data focused on key factors in these kids’ lives: Their families’ socioeconomic status, dynamics within the family, pressures at school and tough issues experienced in childhood.  Other information about their lives was also gleaned from parents and other caregivers and school records. The Texas team focused especially on any self-reports of suicidal thoughts (ideation). Teens who thought they were overweight had triple the odds of these intrusive thoughts, the study found. “Even after adjusting for established suicidal ideation risk factors such as feelings of hopelessness, bullying, cyberbullying, substance use and demographic variables, we still found a connection between how adolescents feel about their weight and whether they are considering self-harm,” said study co-author Catherine LaBrenz.  “We also found that females…  read on >  read on >

Chronic ills like heart disease, asthma or diabetes afflict a majority of U.S. workers, but 60% of those affected say they’ve kept their health issue a secret from employers, a new poll finds. More than a third of workers battling chronic conditions also said they’d skipped a necessary medical appointment over the past year for reasons related to work. “Workers commonly feel stigmatized by their conditions, and this can have a profound effect on both their work and their health,” survey lead author Gillian SteelFisher concluded. She directs the Harvard Opinion Research Program and is a principal research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The new poll was conducted in early October of last year. It included a nationally representative sampling of 1,010 part-time and full-time working adults, all of whom were part of organizations with 50 or more employees. A majority of those polled — 58% — said they had at least one form of chronic health condition, such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes or asthma.  Among this group, 76% said they needed to find the time and resources to manage their health issue during working hours, but 60% said they had never informed their boss that they had a chronic health condition. “Though employers may think they know their employees’ needs, poll results suggest there are widespread and…  read on >  read on >

Want to thrive in tough, stressful times? Stay playful. That’s the take-home message from a new study of who fared best, in terms of mental resiliency, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers said the findings have relevance to weathering any sort of trying times. “Playful” people differ from others in that they display “greater optimism when envisioning future possibilities,” are more creative when it comes to solving problems, and attempt to “infuse quality and enjoyment into everyday activities,” explained study lead author Xiangyou “Sharon” Shen of Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis.  Her team’s study, published Feb. 9 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, tracked the mental health outcomes for 503 individuals throughout the pandemic.  Psychologists already acknowledge playfulness as an important personality trait, and there’s even a Playfulness Trait Scale to measure it.  According to Shen, during the pandemic folks who scored high on the scale “actively altered challenging situations, found creative substitutes for what was lost, viewed obstacles as opportunities for growth and maintained a strong sense of control over their responses.” More playful people tended to stress out less during the COVID years, compared to less-playful types, the study found. Shen said that playful folk did not necessarily engage in different activities or do any particular activity more often.  Instead, they became more deeply involved in whatever activity they were in; were more…  read on >  read on >