Do negative life events promote gerotranscendence in the second half of life?

OBJECTIVES: Gerotranscendence has been defined as a developmental shift in meta-perspective from a materialistic and pragmatic view to a more cosmic and transcendent view. Although gerotranscendence has been argued to increase with age and life experiences, the results have been mixed and based on cross-sectional studies. We use a longitudinal setting to investigate the role of negative life events, age, and gender on change in one dimension of gerotranscendence, cosmic transcendence. METHOD: 1569 individuals (ages 58-89) answered a questionnaire on cosmic transcendence in two cycles of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam in 1995-1996 (time 1) and 1998-1999 (time 2). Controlling for education, marital status, religious affiliation, chronic diseases, functional limitations, depressive symptoms, and social support, change models based on structural equation modeling were fitted to the data to test whether negative life events, age, and gender were associated with change in cosmic transcendence. RESULTS: A higher number of negative life events, especially negative life events other than deaths of others, were associated with increased cosmic transcendence, whereas experiencing no negative life events was associated with decreased cosmic transcendence. The level of cosmic dimension was higher at older than younger ages. Cosmic transcendence decreased over time among the older participants and women, whereas it increased among the younger participants and men. CONCLUSION: Experiencing negative life events has the potential to promote the development of cosmic transcendence, even when controlling for age and gender. In the absence of negative life events, however, cosmic transcendence was observed to decline with aging.

Does social activity decrease risk for institutionalization and mortality in older people?

OBJECTIVES: Social inactivity predicts adverse health events, but less is known about how different dimensions of social activity are related to health. The aim of this study was to investigate collective (e.g., cultural and organizational activities) and productive (e.g., helping others) social activity as predictors of risk for mortality and institutionalization in old age. METHOD: A total of 1,181 community-living people aged 65-84 years at baseline were interviewed face to face as part of the Evergreen project, in Jyväskylä, Finland in 1988. Time to institutionalization and mortality were analyzed in separate models for proportional hazard regression on mortality and competing risks analysis on institutionalization and mortality. RESULTS: At follow-up, approximately 17 years later, 22% of persons were institutionalized and 71% had died. When sociodemographics, health, functioning, and intensity of physical activity were controlled for, collective social activity reduced risk for mortality and initially for institutionalization although this latter effect diminished over time. DISCUSSION: Collective social activity may be associated with a reduced risk for mortality and institutionalization in older people. Further studies on the mechanisms underlying the association between social activity and health are needed.

Social relations in older adults: Secular trends and longitudinal changes over a 16-year follow-up.

Drawing on population studies in Finland, we investigated secular trends and longitudinal changes in social relations. The cohort comparison data comprised on 974 persons aged 65-69 years from three cohorts born between 1919 and 1939 and interviewed in 1988, 1996 and 2004. Longitudinal analyses were conducted for 635 persons aged 65-74 years over a 16-year follow-up at three measurement points. Social relations were studied on the basis of frequency seeing one's offspring, perceptions of the sufficiency of these contacts, and by asking whom the participants considered as their closest person and how often and in how many tasks they helped someone. The cohort comparisons showed that the frequency of seeing one's offspring had decreased in the most recent cohort and that the number of contacts was considered more inadequate. Longitudinal analyses showed that although the proportion of children as the closest persons increased, meetings with them became fewer. Helping others was more common in the last cohort, but in the longitudinal analyses it decreased with age. Finnish people at retirement help others more than before, but they do not meet their offspring as often as they would like. Measures are needed for action to promote intergenerational exchange in older adults on both individual and societal level.

Perceived social support and mortality in older people.

OBJECTIVES: This study examines the effect of perceived social support on all-cause mortality at a 10-year follow-up as well as the plausible mediating factors in this association. METHODS: We measured perceived social support in 206 Finnish men and women aged 80 years old by using the Social Provision Scale, which consists of six dimensions: attachment, social integration, opportunity for nurturance, reassurance of worth, reliable alliance, and guidance. RESULTS: By using a theoretical framework that divided perceived social support into assistance-related and non-assistance-related support, we found that the risk of death was almost 2.5 times higher in women in the lowest tertile of non-assistance-related social support (comprising infrequent experiences of reassurance of worth, emotional closeness, sense of belonging and opportunity for nurturance) than in women in the highest tertile. The risk remained strong even when we controlled for the indicators of baseline sociodemographics and psychological and physiological health and functioning. Among men, none of the perceived social support dimensions showed a significant association with mortality. DISCUSSION: The results of this study present a challenge for society to find and develop new social innovations and interventions in order to promote a sense of emotional social support in older people, thereby contributing to their health and welfare.

Self-rated health and mortality: could clinical and performance-based measures of health and functioning explain the association?

It is well established that self-rated health (SRH) predicts mortality even when other indicators of health status are taken into account. It has been suggested that SRH measures a wide array of mortality-related physiological and pathological characteristics not captured by the covariates included in the analyses. Our aim was to test this hypothesis by examining the predictive value of SRH on mortality controlling for different measurements of body structure, performance-based functioning and diagnosed diseases with a population-based, prospective study over an 18-year follow-up. Subjects consisted of 257 male residents of the city of Jyväskylä, central Finland, aged 51-55 and 71-75 years. Among the 71-75-year-olds the association between SRH and mortality was weaker over the longer compared to shorter follow-up period. In the multivariate Cox regression models with an 18-year follow-up time for middle-aged and a10-year follow-up time for older men, SRH predicted mortality even when the anthropometrics, clinical chemistry and performance-based measures of functioning were controlled for, but not when the number of chronic diseases was included. Although our results confirm the hypothesis that the predictive value of SRH can be explained by diagnosed diseases, its predictive power remained, when the clinical and performance-based measures of health and functioning were controlled.