Science / Medicine : Americans Healthier, but Not Feeling as Well

Although Americans have gotten much healthier in the last 30 years, fewer people say they feel well, probably because of more chronic illness and higher expectations, according to a Harvard psychiatrist.

“Our society currently devotes enormous amounts of time, money and effort to preserving our health and obtaining medical care,” said Dr. Arthur J. Barsky, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“But in one sense that pursuit is proving paradoxical: The substantial improvements in health status have not been accompanied by improvements in the subjective feeling of healthiness and physical well-being,” Barsky wrote in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Instead, people now report higher rates of disability, symptoms and general dissatisfaction with their health.”

Barsky cited studies that show the life expectancy of a child born in the United States in 1984 was 74.7 years--up 6.5 years from 1950.

However, studies have also shown a steady decline in the nation’s sense of physical well-being. The proportion of Americans who are satisfied with their health and physical condition has fallen from 61% in the 1970s to 55% in the mid-1980s, Barsky said.

Surveys found most people reported less than one serious, acute or disabling illness per year in the 1920s, but that figure more than doubled by the early 1980s, he said.