Spouses can impact views on age

RECENT new studies led by University of Michigan researchers have found that as we age, our health is affected by both our own and our partner’s perceptions of growing older.

The papers were published recently in a special supplement of The Gerontologist, with the principal investigator of one project, Jacqui Smith, commenting that the studies were carried out as the team was “interested in the way people interpret their own lives”.

“We know that the images in the world and age stereotypes play a role in how people perceive their own ageing,” Smith added.

“But subtle experiences of discrimination in interactions with strangers and sometimes with your own kids or partner – that is feedback that people take to heart, and either rebel against it or begin to believe it.”

One of the studies, which looked at 1,231 couples with an age range of 51-90, found that couples who tend to view their ageing negatively also tend to become less healthy and less mobile than couples who view their ageing positively.

In addition, husbands’ health problems influenced their own and their wives’ attitudes towards ageing, as well as their wives’ health because of the increased burden of caregiving.

Another study by Jennifer Sun, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate at the U-M Medical School, found after looking at a total of 5,340 participants that the more negatively a person viewed his or her ageing, the more likely he or she was to delay seeking health care and the more barriers he or she saw for seeking care.

The findings still held true even after Sun had taken into account other factors that can delay health care, such as low socioeconomic status, lack of health insurance and multiple chronic health conditions.

The experts found that as people aged, their explicit bias toward older people – or how they would talk out loud about how they felt toward fellow older adults – improved. – AFP-Relaxnews