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Subjective age and positive psychiatry: Identifying the positive characteristics associated with successful aging

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2022

J. Lam ,
A. Aftab ,
E. Lee  and
D. Jeste
J. Lam*
Affiliation:
Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Psychiatry, Providence, United States of America
A. Aftab
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University, Department Of Psychiatry, Cleveland, United States of America
E. Lee
Affiliation:
University of California San Diego, Department Of Psychiatry, La Jolla CA, United States of America
D. Jeste
Affiliation:
University of California San Diego, Department Of Psychiatry, La Jolla, United States of America
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

For older adults, feeling subjectively younger is associated with improvements in cognition, subjective well-being and depressive symptoms. Positive psychiatry is the field that focuses on patient strengths and the promotion of positive outcomes, rather than just mitigation of illness. Younger subjective age may be a useful measure of successful aging, but little is known about how subjective age is associated with positive psychosocial characteristics.

Objectives

Our objective is to characterize how subjective age is related validated positive psychosocial measures, with the goal of better understanding the determinants of successful aging.

Methods

The Successful Aging Evaluation (SAGE) longitudinal study recruited over 1,300 community-dwelling residents of San Diego County, CA, from age 21 to over 100. A single-item question asked “How old/young do you feel?” We used spearman correlations to assess the relationship between subjective age and validated positive psychosocial scales such as the Self-Rated Successful Aging, Life Orientation Test, Personal Mastery Scale, Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, Adult Hope Scale, and Social Support Index.

Results

Mean chronological age was 65.5, and mean subjective age was 53.6. Mean age discrepancy was 11.5 years. Younger subjective age was positively associated with most of the positive psychosocial characteristics measured, including self-rated successful aging, optimism, personal mastery, resilience, curiosity, hope, and social support.

Conclusions

There is a growing movement within psychiatry to understand the positive characteristics that lead to successful aging. This is one of the first studies demonstrating younger age identities are associated with positive psychosocial characteristics and successful aging.

Disclosure

No significant relationships.

Keywords

optimismsocial supportresilienceGeriatric Psychiatry
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 65 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 30th European Congress of Psychiatry , June 2022 , pp. S174
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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