Where the term comes from

Keyes introduced languishing and its opposite, flourishing, in a 2002 paper that treated well-being as a set of symptoms that can be present or absent, much as depression is defined by its symptoms. It is now usually measured with the 14-item Mental Health Continuum–Short Form, which asks how often in the past month a person felt, for example, happy, that life had direction, or that people are basically good. Low scores on both the feeling items and the functioning items define languishing.

What the research shows

In the 1995 national survey Keyes analyzed, covering 3,032 US adults aged 25 to 74, 17.2 percent were flourishing, 56.6 percent moderately mentally healthy and 12.1 percent languishing. Major depressive episodes in the previous year were twice as common among languishing adults as among moderately healthy ones, and nearly six times as common as among flourishing adults; the languishing group also reported more lost or cut-back workdays. A decade later, half of those languishing had improved and half of those flourishing had declined, and losing mental health predicted later mental illness.

How it differs from depression and burnout

In Keyes’s two-continua model, mental health and mental illness are related but separate dimensions, so a person can be free of depression and still not be well. Languishing is not burnout, which the WHO ties to chronic stress at work, nor post-achievement depression, a popular label for low mood after a goal. A persistently low mood that lasts two weeks or more calls for an assessment. The why success feels empty page compares emptiness, burnout, depression and languishing.

Related terms

Post-Achievement Depression: the flat or low mood some people describe after a big win.

High-Functioning Burnout: exhaustion and distance from work while results still hold.

Hedonic Treadmill: why gains in life circumstances often stop lifting well-being.