In fact, some of the most successful people in history have suffered from relentless, incapacitating depression – some have won their battles, or, at least, continued to battle. Some, sadly, succumb to it. So why does depression affect the super-successful, the ones who seem have it all?
There's also the perception — and sometimes reality — of constant competition and failure doesn't seem to be an option. Grueling hours, constant criticism from others, including strangers, and a loss of the identity you once possessed can open the door to mental health conditions such as depression.
In fact, studies show that highly successful individuals such as CEOs may be depressed at more than double the rate of the average population (which is already close to 20%). We also know from cross-national research that depression is actually more common in wealthy countries than less wealthy countries.
The prevalence of depressive symptoms was 39.3% for participants with family income under $20,000, 25.5% for participants with family income from $20,000–$75,000, and 14.9% for participants with family income greater than $75,000.
Success and mental illness go together like peanut butter and jelly. In fact, it doesn't take long to put together a list of successful people who struggle with mental illness. Famous and successful individuals like Abraham Lincoln, J.K. Rowling, and Jim Carey all struggled with clinical depression.
People who have gone through adverse life events (unemployment, bereavement, traumatic events) are more likely to develop depression.
Women are nearly twice as likely to suffer from major depression than men. However, men and women are equally likely to develop bipolar disorder. While major depression can develop at any age, the average age at onset is the mid-20s.
Key points. Millionaires tend to be happy, but not extremely happy. At very high levels ($10M+), multimillionaires tend to be slightly happier than millionaires. Self-made millionaires are happier than those who inherited their millions.
Once you hit an annual household income of $75,000 (£62,000), earning more money didn't make you any happier. In 2021, the happiness researcher Matthew Killingsworth released a dissenting study, showing that happiness increased with income and there wasn't evidence of a plateau.
It might seem ludicrous to hear that anyone from this pool of millionaires responded as lower than a “10 out of 10” on happiness. But the results showed that millionaires were around an 8 out of 10 on their self-reported happiness.
Studies have also found that higher IQ is associated with more mental illness, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
The average age of onset for major depressive disorder is between 35 and 40 years of age. Onset in early adulthood may be linked with more depressive episodes, a longer duration of illness, and therefore a more difficult clinical course.
If the depression is mild, it may resolve itself without any type of formal treatment. If you have moderate or severe depression, additional treatment may be needed to get it to subside.
High achievers are wired to be dissatisfied when we meet goals — that is the evolutionary motivation to do the next big thing — but the result is often cumulating disappointment. Year after year of finding success less fulfilling than we expected makes us pessimistic about ever attaining satisfaction.
Key points. High-IQ people often experience social isolation, which can lead to depression or make them act more introverted than is their nature. The very intelligent know they're intelligent, so they're prone to setting lofty expectations for themselves that they can't meet.
According to the researchers, nicer people are more vulnerable to depression because they are more likely to experience extreme empathy, guilt, and stress. And this emotional sensitivity is wired into the deepest and most automatic regions of the brain—places that are easy triggers for depression.
How old is the average millionaire? The average millionaire is 57 years old. This is because it takes smart financial decisions, hard work, and wise investments to become a millionaire, most of which don't fully pay off until around the age of 50 or 60.
Regardless of other living conditions, a higher income was consistently linked to a reduced self-rated level of loneliness. From this study, it's dangerously simple to conclude that more is always better.
While people with higher incomes do tend to score higher on IQ tests, the association only goes so far. In fact, some rich people in the top one percent of earners display less intelligence than their peers earning considerably less.
In addition to those well-documented costs, it turns out that the poor not only experience more stress than the rich on a daily basis, but it is also more likely to be “bad” stress, which can have long-term effects on the ability to plan for and invest in the future.
The Boston studies have consistently found respondents to be a generally dissatisfied lot, whose vast fortunes have contributed to deep anxieties involving love, work, and family. They are often even dissatisfied with the size of their fortunes.
People born into higher social classes are more overconfident and have "an exaggerated belief" that they will perform better at certain tasks than others, a perception not shared by their lower-class counterparts, a new study published Monday in the prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found.
We take a life-course approach to mental health because good mental health begins in infancy. 20% of adolescents may experience a mental health problem in any given year. 50% of mental health problems are established by age 14 and 75% by age 24.