If you’ve ever felt a little crazy after battling the morning rush hour or losing a night’s sleep to the sound of helicopters buzzing overhead, you’re definitely not alone.
According to a study published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin last Monday, growing up in an urban environment could make you more likely to develop—you guessed it—schizophrenia. After following the lives of 2232 identical and fraternal British twins from birth to the age of 18, researchers found that children raised in urban environments were 67 percent more likely to experience symptoms of psychosis. And when the researchers mention higher incidences of “psychotic experiences,” they mean behavior more along the lines of hearing voices and feeling intense paranoia than annoyance at limited parking spots.
Helen Fisher from King’s College London teamed up with Candice Odgers of Duke University to study the twins and collected tons of additional data along the way, from how much money their parents made to every big move and major life event in between. To zero in on the rates of psychosis, Fisher and Odgers ruled out common factors associated with city dwellers—i.e., higher rates of poverty and drug use, which can lead to more mental health issues. After ruling out these factors, they found city kids were only 43 percent more likely to develop a mental disorder.
Though Odgers and Fisher wouldn’t be the first researchers to notice this correlation. “The high rates of psychotic illness in urban environments may be the result of the influence of environmental factors,” Dr. Jim van Os wrote in a 2001 study published in the Archive of General Psychiatry. “As the urban effect appears to have its impact during urban upbringing rather than during adult residence per se, developmental mechanisms ought to be considered.”
Ultimately, you shouldn’t ditch the city you love based on one or two (or 10) studies. But if you’re more susceptible to mental health issues and living in a city aggravates those issues, learning about these findings might be the encouragement you need to seek help.
Ladder leads out of darkness.Photo credit 
Woman's reflection in shadow.Photo credit 
Young woman frazzled.Photo credit 
Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.