How Grudges Damage Your Mental Health

In recent years, researchers have shown that carrying a sense of injustice or unfairness about something over a prolonged period can have an adverse effect on our mental health. It can make painful conditions worse.

The classic case is where a person incurs a painful injury and blames someone—a car crash victim aggrieved at a reckless driver, for example, or a worker blaming their employer for an accident on the shop floor, according to this article in Greater Good. The victim’s sense of injustice needn’t stem from the accident itself, either. It might come from how they are treated afterwards by the likes of health professionals, insurance representatives, or family members.

Why do these insights matter? Knowing that perceived injustice affects pain means you can potentially do something about it, and you can use self-care to combat such issues as depression and anxiety. Making a difference to sufferers is likely to be challenging, however, not least because perceived injustices arise for so many different reasons.