A new study of more than 700,000 people living in Finland found that mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and eating disorders could potentially be transmitted socially within adolescent peer groups.
The team hypothesized that several mechanisms could be involved if mental disorders might be transmitted socially via peer groups."One plausible mechanism is the normalization of mental disorders through increased awareness and receptivity to diagnosis and treatment when having individuals with diagnosis in the same peer network," the authors explained.
“It is conceivable that long-term exposure to a depressive individual could lead to the gradual development of depressive symptoms through the well-established neural mechanisms of emotional contagion,” the authors added. Social psychologist Elaine Hatfield coined the term"emotional contagion" to describe how people observe and then unconsciously mimic the emotions and behaviors of the people they spend the most time with.