Abstract
While it is understood that longevity and health are influenced by complex interactions among biological, psychological, and sociological factors, there is a general lack of understanding on how psychosocial factors impact longevity, health, and quality of life among the oldest old. One of the reasons for this paradox is that the amount of funded research on aging in the US is significantly larger in the biomedical compared to psychosocial domains. The goals of this paper are to highlight recent data to demonstrate the impact of four pertinent psychosocial domains on health and quality of life of the oldest old and supplement recommendations of the 2001 NIA Panel on Longevity for future research. The four domains highlighted in this paper are (1) demographics, life events, and personal history, (2) personality, (3) cognition, and (4) socioeconomic resources and support systems.
Highlights
A recent review of centenarian research [1] shows a biopsychosocial approach that takes into account biological, psychological, and sociological mechanisms and their interactions may be most efficient to understand the multidimensional aspects of extreme longevity
When specific key words were employed in the search within the biomedical and psychosocial domains and longevity between 2004 and 2009, the ratio of biomedical to psychosocial studies ranged from a low of about 3 : 1 to a high of about 7 : 1. This contradictory situation might reflect the disproportional amount of funding on biomedical compared to psychosocial aspects of aging as evidenced by funding at the US National Institute on Aging [3] and perhaps a general lack of understanding by the research community of the impact and measurement of psychosocial factors among the oldest old
We found that the Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) is probably sufficient to ascertain an overall level of cognitive functioning, and the MMSE predicts most of the variance in basic and instrumental activities of daily living (BADL and IADL)
Summary
A recent review of centenarian research [1] shows a biopsychosocial approach that takes into account biological, psychological, and sociological mechanisms and their interactions may be most efficient to understand the multidimensional aspects of extreme longevity. We hope to inform our peers on how to better understand psychosocial processes and to incorporate pertinent psychosocial predictors to enrich future longevity research. This will be accomplished by sharing a summary of how these issues are addressed in the literature in combination with recent empirical data that demonstrate their impact on health and longevity. We seek to outline the impact of four generally acknowledged psychosocial predictors of longevity and health. These are (1) demographics, life events, and personal history, (2) personality, (3) cognition, and (4) socio-economic resources and support systems. Based on recent psychosocial data, we seek to update and supplement the recommendations of the 2001 NIA Panel on Longevity
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