Are you flourishing? Many young adults aren’t, new study suggests [Video]

People flourish when all major aspects of their life are good, but a new global study suggests that isn’t the case for young adults in many high-income countries.

That surprised the study’s co-lead. Based on previous research in the field, Tyler VanderWeele of Harvard University says he was expecting middle-aged people to report to feeling worse about their physical and mental health, relationships, income, work and more.

Not necessarily so, according to the 200,000 adults in 22 countries who responded to the Global Flourishing Study, the results of which were published in Wednesday’s issue of the journal Nature Mental Health

“Perhaps one of the more troubling features of this data is that we find when we aggregate across the 22 countries, flourishing tends to increase with age so that the youngest individuals are reporting the lowest levels of flourishing,” VanderWeele said at a news conference. 

The study didn’t specifically define “young adult” but, …