Constantly connected via Facebook and Twitter, you may feel like you have a lot of friends. But will they be your go-to friends in a crisis?
Friendships improve physical and psychological health, and much is lost by letting them wither, research shows. Yet many people are too busy to make time for their friends. We ask women in New York how they do it.
Overwhelmed by home, family and work obligations, many people find it difficult to make and maintain deep friendships. Yet these connections are the kind that best support health and happiness.
When one of her high-school friends was laid off, Lauren Thormeier of Dublin, Ohio, took time out of her workday as a clinical therapist and left housework undone to listen to her friend air her worries and to brainstorm solutions. "You just say to yourself, the dishes can wait, the laundry can wait. Your friend needs you." In turn, Ms. Thormeier says, she knows she could call her friend "in the middle of the night" in a crisis.
Friendships of any kind can bear health benefits. The most satisfied, contented mothers are the ones who spend the most time each week connecting with friends, according to a survey of 2,000 mothers by CafeMom, a website for mothers. Social and emotional support is linked in numerous studies to better health and lower rates of disability, depression and anxiety.
Janet Schiavone, Nikki George, Joan Confoy and Donna Lee, left to right, have a group called 'Girl Talk.'
But the deepest friendships confer the greatest benefits. A sense of being loved, cared for and listened to fosters a sense of meaning and purpose and reduces stress-induced wear and tear on the body, lowering the heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones, according to research published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. Supportive friendships also are linked in research to increased longevity and may actually change the way you experience stressful events, buffering the negative mental effects.
Friends have a measurable impact in reducing depression after life turning points, research shows. New parents who were more satisfied with their friendships reported lower rates of depression after childbirth, says a study of 137 couples published in 2002 in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
Such friendships seem to hold more health benefits for woman than men. Among men and women who had experienced emotional abuse or neglect in childhood, according to a study published last year in the journal Depression and Anxiety, women who had supportive friends faced a significantly better chance of fighting off depression in adulthood—but not men.
While the reasons aren't completely clear, other research shows men place less emphasis than women on the depth of their ties with friends and more emphasis on how often they see them or how long they have known them. Women, on the other hand, tend to have more intimate bonds with their friends, and they stress the emotional qualities of their relationships.
While the Girl Talk members have plenty of differences that might divide them—the women are both at-home and working mothers, Republicans and Democrats, and their religious backgrounds differ—"we're beyond labels," Ms. Schiavone says. "We're friends—and that has been our saving grace."
By Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com
Full articles available at : Wall Street Journal Online
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