Languishing Is A Rising Mental Health Issue: 7 Signs You’re Experiencing It

Despite their similarities, there are distinctions between languishing and depression. Depression is a mental illness, where languishing can be thought of more as a state of being or a feeling. “I can see where languishing could become a slippery slope,” Carmichael says, but notes, “I would definitely say depression is a whole other beast.”

She adds that feelings of being stuck and unmotivated don’t necessarily mean you’re depressed, but rather you’re dealing with “a kind of lower-grade type of depressive feeling.”

To expound on that, one of Keyes’ conclusions from his research was, in fact, that “mental illness and mental health are highly correlated but belong to separate continua, and therefore the prevention and treatment of mental illnesses will not necessarily result in more mentally healthy individuals.”

In short: just because someone doesn’t have a diagnosed mental illness does not mean their mental health is good.

The research concluded that “languishing and depression were associated with significant psychosocial impairment in terms of perceived emotional health, limitations of activities of daily living, and workdays lost or cutback,” Keyes writes.

And for what it’s worth, he also found that the risk of a major depressive episode was nearly six times higher for languishing participants compared to those flourishing (and two times more likely for languishing participants than those who were “moderately mentally healthy”).