Recent research in the field of medicine has shown that a specific perception of significance, uniqueness, and being needed on a job or by a family has a significant effect in reducing the risk to cancer, strokes, heart attack, hypertension, and other diseases. This perception also increases the probability of recovering. So even at the most basic level of our resistance to illness and disease and our motivation to live comes the direct need to believe that we play a contributing role in the lives of people who matter to us.

H. Stephen Glenn with Jane Nelsen
Raising Children For Success
pp. 89