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How Do Seniors Define Successful Aging?
Older adults perspectives on healthy aging surprises
many
Jan. 18, 2006 - Understanding how older adults
define successful aging is a critical component to the well-being and
quality of life for this burgeoning population. A study published in the
January edition of The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry
concluded that despite having chronic illnesses and some disability most
community-dwelling senior citizens saw themselves as aging successfully.
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As Americans look forward to longer life
expectancies, defining healthy aging through the eyes of older adults
will serve to enhance the overall health of the community by allowing us
to develop programs and offer resources to help older Americans lead
quality lifestyles, said Dilip Jeste, M.D., Director of the Sam and
Rose Stein Institute for Research in Aging and Distinguished Professor
of Psychiatry and Neurosciences at the University of California, San
Diego School of Medicine, Staff Psychiatrist, VA San Diego Healthcare
System, and lead author of the study.
Incorporating the perspectives of older adults and
understanding the correlations between self-rated criteria and
researcher-defined criteria could lead to development of a valid and
reliable model for successful aging.
Ninety-two percent of the participants rated
themselves as aging successfully by completing a self-rated
questionnaire survey. Study participants were 205 community-dwelling
adults older than age 60 who resided in four different sites.
Researchers assessed how subjective ratings of successful aging compare
with researcher-defined criteria.
Findings showed that contrary to expectations,
successful aging was not related to age, ethnicity, level of education,
marital status, or income but rather to
● greater participation in activities,
● having more close friends,
● visiting with family, and
● spending time reading and listening to the radio.
Another study, published in the same issue,
reviewed the lifestyles and expectations of a group of 86- to
87-year-old men who graduated from Yale and compared their responses
with equivalent data from the general public. The study concluded that
the self-selected group of 151 participants had a near universal
optimism toward their quality of life, even in the face of physical
disabilities.
Quality of life is a primary concern for the men
who took part in the study.
Independence, often associated with mobility and
driving, is an important key to maintaining a good quality of life and
considered by many older adults as essential to their well-being.
Memory loss and depression, often considered signs
of old age, were under-represented in the respondents answers, but were
alluded to in the comments appended to the questionnaire.
Ben Eiseman, M.D., professor emeritus at the
University of Colorado Hospital and author of the study, noted that,
the most interesting finding was the glaring difference between the
number ascribed to quality of life and objective evidence of crippling
disease.
Interestingly, at least 85 percent of the
respondents assessed the quality of their own life to be between 7 and 9
on a scale from 1 to 10.
Research from both studies offers important
conclusions that will serve to determine the health management of older
adults by enhancing and promoting a healthy lifestyle. The findings
highlight the importance of recognizing factors deemed important to
older adults that lead to living better and living longer.
The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry,
published monthly, is the official journal of the American Association
for Geriatric Psychiatry and can be found online at
www.AJGPonline.org.
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