By Carol Church, Writer, Family Album
Reviewed by Linda Bobroff, PhD, RD, LD/N, Department of Family, Youth, and Community Sciences, University of Florida
Picture an older adult—maybe over the age of 75. What image comes to mind? Did you imagine a person in nursing care? Someone alone, frail, and needing assistance? Or did you think of someone who is self-sufficient, active, and content, with a rich social life?
Ageism: A Real Problem
If you suspected that I was setting you up with this question, you were right. Many people today are aware of the problem of ageism–stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination directed toward older people. Ageism can be a serious problem when it exists in the workplace. It can physically harm older adults when medical professionals fail to take their symptoms seriously. And it’s painful on a personal level, as when a co-worker, client, friend, or family member assumes that an older adult is no longer as mentally acute as he or she once was.
Ageism also makes itself known through the basic attitude that getting older is inevitably a negative experience, and that older age is a depressing, difficult time of life. This attitude often is culturally reinforced through jokes about aging. (Personally, I don’t appreciate humor that portrays older people in negative ways; after all, some of the people I love most in this world are older adults.) Of course, the media weighs in through its failure to portray elders in a positive light. All of these factors probably contribute to the common assumption that younger people are generally happier than older adults.
What’s It Really Like to Get Older?
But in fact, there’s plenty of research to suggest just the opposite. In a new Malaysian study of over 1400 older adults and 1100 teenagers, researchers assessed two different age groups. These teens and older people were asked how often they woke up feeling “fresh and rested,” how often they felt “active and vigorous,” how interesting they found daily life, and how often they felt “calm and relaxed” and “cheerful and in good spirits” (Psychiatric Research Unit, WHO Collaborating Centre in Mental Health, 1998, p. 1). These answers were scored to rate their overall emotional well-being.
On the whole, the older adults reported being in significantly better spirits than the teens, with higher well-being overall and fewer people in poor emotional health.
This is far from the only study showing aging in a positive light, with other research suggesting that older adults may be less anxious, less stressed, and generally somewhat happier than younger people.
Aging May Naturally Dispose Us to be Positive
Why would this be? Research studies have found that as we age, we tend to focus more on the positive, choosing to downplay or even tending to forget negative experiences and emotions in favor of the positive. Some researchers suggest that as we get closer to the end of life and realize our time here is limited, there is a natural tendency to focus on well-being and enjoyment. This is despite the fact that there are, of course, some problems often associated with growing older.
I don’t know about you, but I find this research pretty reassuring. It seems that along with being “older and wiser,” many of us also may be “older and happier.”
(Photo credit: the old man and the sea: santa barbara 2006 by torbakhopper. CC BY 2.0. Cropped.)
References:
Momtaz, Y. A., Tengku, A. H., & Rahimah, I. (2014). Cohort comparisons: emotional well-being among adolescents and older adults. Clinical Interventions in Aging, 9, 813-819.
Psychiatric Research Unit, WHO Collaborating Centre in Mental Health. (1998). WHO (Five) Well-Being Index. Retrieved from http://www.psykiatri-regionh.dk/NR/rdonlyres/ACF049D6-C94D-49B2-B34C-96A7C5DA463B/0/WHO5_English.pdf
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