Being Neurotic Could Help You Live Longer

A new study found a lower risk of mortality for people who identified as neurotic.

Courteney Cox as Monica Geller and Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing in Friends

Being neurotic is not really considered a positive personality trait; neurotic people have long been considered unhealthy (the phrase "worrying yourself to death" springs to mind).

While most can unilaterally agree that feeling irrational anxiety for large portions of the day can certainly be detrimental to your health, a new study has suggested that neurotic people might actually avoid dying prematurely.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Southampton studied more than 500,000 British adults (between the ages of 37 and 73) over a period of around six years. During the study, which was published in the Psychological Science journal, around 4,500 of the participants died.

The participants completed a personality assessment which measured their neuroticism, and they were also asked their views on whether they thought they were in good health.

According to the Collins English dictionary, someone who is neurotic is often frightened, worried and anxious about things which others might consider unimportant.

In their initial analysis, when just taking into account people's age and sex, the researchers found that mortality rates were slightly higher for those with neuroticism. However, they then took into account the results of people's self-rated health tests and found that actually being higher in neuroticism came with a lower risk of death.

Lead researcher Catharine Gale told that the results varied depending on how people rated their health.

"Among people who rated their health as excellent, there was no relationship between neuroticism and mortality, but among those who rated their health as fair or poor, being higher in neuroticism was linked with a small protective effect."

Gale says that on average people who are more neurotic are also more likely to rate their health as poor.

The reason why neurotic people live longer may come down to the fact they are more vigilant and protective over their health because they worry about it so much.

Gale and her team also found that the self-rated health reports were irrelevant when it came to how people scored on one particular part of the neuroticism test.

"We also found that people who scored higher on one aspect of neuroticism that relates to worry and vulnerability was linked with lower risk of death, and that was regardless of how people rated their health," she explained.

This 'worried-vulnerable' part of neuroticism was measured by asking participants questions like: 'Are your feelings easily hurt?', 'Are you ever troubled by feelings of guilt?' and 'Are you a worrier?'

Interestingly, the researchers found that how neurotic someone was had no bearing on whether they engaged in risky health behaviours like smoking, drinking or exercise.

"We had thought that greater worry or vulnerability might lead people to behave in a healthier way and hence lower their risk of death, but this was not the case," Gale said in a statement.

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