Yes, the Purposeful Palm is right: A report published by the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen suggests that the 2020 global decline in happiness is as sharp as if all eight billion of us were divorcing. The study also found that for every 100 new COVID-19 cases another 7,200 people, on average, become anxious. In the United States, COVID cases are still skyrocketing so it’s likely that suffering will continue escalating through Christmas and New Years. (Yet, the Palm’s tip is not just for Americans. The rest of the world might have handled the pandemic more competently than we did, but meaningful declines in hardship and restoration of healthy normalcy are still far off in the future.) And yes, as we would expect, the Happiness Research Institute also found that our kindness toward others will help improve our own mental health. (For more on that, of course, read Do Good at Work!)