Being bored can kill you, study finds
February 12, 2010
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Lesley Ciarula Taylor
It is possible to be bored to death, new research has found.
In fact, two public health professors at the University College London discovered people who are very bored had a 37 per cent higher chance of dying than people who figured out how to keep their minds engaged.
Boredom is more a symptom than a cause of death, Drs. Annie Britton and Martin Shipley said in their study, published this week in the International Journal of Epidemiology. People who were bored also were likely to hold down menial jobs, get little exercise, feel unhappy and unmotivated, and to smoke, drink or do drugs.
Setting off “in a rare moment of idleness one day,” the researchers crunched numbers from a 1985-88 questionnaire filled out by 7,524 civil servants aged 35 to 55 in London.
The results were compared with mortality rates as of April 2009.
“We found that those who report quite a lot or a great deal of boredom are more likely to be younger, to be women, to rate their health worse, to be in low employment grades and to report lower physical activity.”
The civil servants were asked, three years apart, about their level of boredom. The ones who were bored in 1985 and still bored in 1988 were at greatest risk, the study said. The likely cause of death was cardiovascular disease.
“We conclude that those who report being bored are more likely to die than those who are not bored.”
The least bored people surveyed were age 50 to 55 males with average or better health, top-level jobs and who engaged in vigorous physical activity.
Although there might not be much a person can do about their job status, the researchers said, “finding renewed interest in social and physical activities may alleviate boredom and improve health, thus reducing the risk of being bored to death.”
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