Abstract
Background: Understanding the lower level of happiness among older adults with cognitive impairment has been a largely neglected issue. This study (1) reports on the level of happiness among older adults in Singapore and (2) examines the potential mediating roles of depression, disability, social contact frequency, and loneliness in the relationship between cognitive scores and happiness. Methods: Data for this study were extracted from the Well-being of the Singapore Elderly (WiSE) study: a cross-sectional; comprehensive single-phase survey conducted among Singapore citizens and permanent residents that were aged 60 years and above (n = 2565). The Geriatric Mental State examination (GMS) was administered to the participants. Questions pertaining to socio-demographic characteristics; happiness; loneliness; social contact; depression; and, disability were utilized in this study. Logistic regression analyses and mediation analyses were used to explore the correlates of happiness and potential mediating factors. Results: Overall, 96.2% of older adults in Singapore reported feeling either fairly happy or very happy. In the regression analysis, individuals of Malay descent, those who were married/cohabiting, or had higher education levels were more likely to report feeling happy. After controlling for socio-demographic factors, higher cognitive scores were associated with higher odds of reporting happiness. We found that the positive association between cognition and happiness was fully mediated by disability, depression, loneliness, and frequency of contact with friends. Conclusion: The majority of the older adult population reported feeling fairly or very happy. While cognitive impairment has shown limited reversibility in past studies, unhappiness among older adults with cognitive impairment might be potentially mitigated through interventions addressing accompanying issues of social isolation, disability, and depression
Highlights
Happiness, being defined as “the overall appreciation of one’s life-as-a-whole” [1], has been increasingly shown to confer a number of protective health benefits
Cooper et al [7] had reported that cognitive impairment itself does not explain the lower quality of life among individuals with cognitive impairment; instead, physical and mental disability fully mediated the relationship between cognitive impairment and a lower quality of life
Our study showed that loneliness and the frequency of contact with friends were significant mediators of the relationship between happiness and cognitive impairment, in which loneliness was a larger mediator than objective social isolation
Summary
Happiness, being defined as “the overall appreciation of one’s life-as-a-whole” [1], has been increasingly shown to confer a number of protective health benefits. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 4954; doi:10.3390/ijerph16244954 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph. Understanding the lower level of happiness among older adults with cognitive impairment has been a largely neglected issue. This study (1) reports on the level of happiness among older adults in Singapore and (2) examines the potential mediating roles of depression, disability, social contact frequency, and loneliness in the relationship between cognitive scores and happiness
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