Work is good for your health: "Working 'makes us happy', an expert has claimed. He found being unemployed could be as dangerous as smoking 400 cigarettes a day. Unemployed young adult males are 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their working counterparts and are also more likely to suffer depression, illness or even die, it was claimed. Statistically, the health risks of being out of work for six months or more are equivalent to smoking 20 packet of cigarettes a day, said a professor at Cardiff University. Prof Mansel Aylward advised us to wander to work with a spring in our step and a smile on our face, happy to avoid the depression of unemployment. He said doctors should be concerned about getting people back to work rather than writing sicknotes because being out of work could be more risky that working on an oil platform or as a safari guide. His analysis of figures from the Office of National Statistics show the depressed unemployed risk serious illness and even death, with young unemployed men 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their working peers. But Professor Aylward, Director of Cardiff University's Centre for Psychosocial and Disability research, also said work can only make us so happy because we each have a threshold that limits how happy we can be."