Psychological Wellbeing

Research summary

• Two independent meta-analyses link dispositional optimism to lower cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality, and a broader synthesis found psychological well-being predicts all-cause mortality independently of the absence of distress — suggesting wellbeing is not just the inverse of mental illness.
• Real cohort studies reinforce this: gratitude was associated with lower mortality among older US female nurses, and optimism was linked to greater longevity in a racially diverse cohort of women.
• A meta-analytic review specifically connects positive well-being to better cardiovascular health, and positive emotional states are associated with better cancer survival in meta-analysis.
• Nearly all of this evidence is observational rather than from trials that raise wellbeing and then measure mortality, so causation remains inferred; the associations are nonetheless consistent across multiple independent cohorts and outcomes.