No, science proves that happy people with agency and control in their lives are healthier.

We already know that people with high self-esteem heal better and quicker than people with low self-esteem, and for many chronic conditions (including HIV/AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and -- yes -- even just plain old aging), the nature of the condition itself can really chisel away at your self-image.

I mean, we can easily imagine that needing someone else to wipe your ass for you is pretty humiliating and infantilizing, right? But even milder situations -- for example, when someone brings you some groceries because you're too weak to leave the house, or when someone you've known for years doesn't recognize you because you've lost so much weight -- can be humiliating, especially if they keep happening in a sustained way.

That feeling of being unable to provide adequate self-care, coupled with a sense that you've lost control over your life, can be absolutely devastating, and reams and reams of the psychological and medical literature have been devoted to identifying and addressing this side of illness.

And, with that in mind, one established intervention is to give people houseplants.

As silly as it sounds, giving a cancer patient a houseplant, and encouraging them to spend at least 3-4 minutes daily taking care of it (watering it, checking it for dead leaves, perhaps even talking or singing to it), will improve their self-esteem and their likelihood of recovery considerably.

The critical thing is that the patient is to be made responsible for the plant: this is a responsibility they can definitely handle, and that teeny tiny little bit of agency and control and responsibility is what makes all the difference in the world. It can't replace the things people give up when they get this unwell, but it can still help immensely.

Housepets work the same way, but there's nothing magical about them. So long as the patient can cope with the responsibility, it doesn't matter whether you give them an orchid or a hamster or a dog or a spider plant or whatever else. Anything to give them that sense of responsibility for and involvement in the world.