The friendships and connections we build over time make our lives meaningful. It's tough to grow and become better if we don't have any close relationships. Think of these connections like the soil that helps us grow; without them, life can feel kind of dry and empty. So, the people we connect with? They're like the water and sunlight that make our personal garden of growth flourish.
Psychology Today (1999) touts research that indicates individuals in general, and women in particular, underutilize friendship as a powerful healing force for physical and mental illness. According to the article, a group of chronically depressed women experienced substantial improvement in mental health when they were prescribed personal “befrienders” who visited, went on outings with, and became confidants of the participants over a 12-month period. The findings after the first year of befriending yielded the same success rate as traditional medical and psychological interventions (i.e. antidepressants or cognitive therapies).
Further, the most successful women in the study group experienced a feeling of renewal in their personal and social lives that enabled them to move forward in more healthy ways
Having friends can apparently also lead to differences in an individual’s physical and biochemical reactions to environmental stressors (Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung, & Updegraff, 2000).
Specifically, studies conducted at UCLA revealed that some individuals (women, in particular) have the tendency to “tend and befriend,” rather than resort to the more common “fight or flight” response as a first line of defense against environmental and social stressors. Tending and befriending deals specifically with the act of self-disclosure between trusted companions to talk or work through the stresses in one’s life. Because friendships are grounded in communication, functional friendships provide a strong sense of personal support. Individuals who feel supported by their close friends tend to live longer, stay healthier, and have a more positive outlook when faced with adversity.
As Duck and Pittman (1994) note, relationships are mental creations constituted by interaction. Our relationships with others are defined by how we communicate with those others and exist in our perceptions of that interaction. Across many interpersonal interactions, we develop cognitive maps of our friendships as they are interconnected within our social network (Duck and Pittman, 1994). In many ways, this cognitive map is similar to keeping an updated medical immunization record.
Maintaining the “optimal dosage” of friendship requires constant monitoring and negotiation, because our relationship needs vary along with our personal and emotional needs (Duck and Pittman, 1994). In our view, the friendships fostered and developed at different points in our lives are a snapshot of our personal and communication needs at particular points in the lifespan.
Just as there are recommended doses for over-the-counter medications, prescriptions, and medical vaccines depending upon one’s age, gender, illness, and risk factors, personal relationships should be a “match” to the individual enacting them. While we cannot offer a “one-size-fits-all” friendship vaccine to meet everyone’s relational needs, we believe that understanding how friendship is associated with health is an effective starting point toward proactive physical and mental health.
We maintain that friendship functions as a behavioural vaccine primarily through its social support functions. I conclude by providing practical advice regarding the initiation and maintenance of friendship networks with the goal of improved physical and mental health.
In Durkheim's classic study on suicide and social ties (1951), it's highlighted that not having close relationships increases the likelihood of suicide. Essentially, the idea is that these connections provide meaning to a person's life. To put it simply, individuals who are disconnected from reality are more likely to experience higher rates of suicide.
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