Lesson 3: Healthy Aging & Does Wisdom Increase with Age?

Attention

Being physically healthy is a big part of healthy aging, but it is not the only part...nor is it always a necessary part!

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this lesson's material, students will be able to:

• Identify ways in which wisdom is related to successful aging.
• Identify factors that are associated with successful aging
• Identify potential barriers to successful aging that individuals with mental illness may experience

Reading

Read Chapter 7 Healthy Aging: A Second Pass in Vaillant

Read Chapter 9 Does Wisdom Increase with Age? in Vaillant

Read Chapter 8 from Cattan, M. (2009). Mental Health and Well-being in Later Life. Maidenhead, UK: McGraw-Hill Education.

Teaching

Healthy Aging

Healthy aging involves the development of healthy social, emotional, and physical health.

Psychosocial Health

Psychosocial health contrasts the Happy-Well person with the Sad-Sick person. One has to consider, however, that there are many ways in which a person can be "sick". This is psychosocial sickness...

• attitudes
• depression
• motivation
• emotions
• friends
• etc.

These are the things that can become sick. Even if the body is "well" or "sick" sometimes these other factors will affect if a person becomes ill, gets a a disease, or simply becomes emotionally or physically worn out. We all have our own perceptions of aging and what being old looks like. Below is a link to watch 4 different short films which were film submissions for the 2014 Health Aging Film Festival in Seattle, Washington. Please watch at least two of the four films to expose yourself to others' perspective on growing old and what that means.

Healthy-Aging-Film-Festival-is-Fun-for-All!.htm

Consider the six dimensions that Vaillant uses to differentiate between the Happy-Well and the Sad-Sick person:

• Absence of objective physical disability
• Subjective physical health
• Length of undisabled life
• Objective mental health
• Objective social supports
• Subjective life satisfaction

Now consider the life of a person who has a mental illness. Which of these areas may be challenging to navigate in order to help bring about "healthy aging" in this population?

The following chapter is from Burack-Weiss, A. (2006). The Caregiver's Tale : Loss and Renewal in Memoirs of Family Life. New York: Columbia University Press. The chapter describes the challenges caregivers face when they have loved one in their lives who experience mental illness as part of their life's journey. The chapter is in two PDF's below:

Mental Illness and Chemical Dependence Part 1: Burack-Weiss Ch 5 pg 31-37 and Part 2: Burack-Weiss Ch 5 pg 37 - 39

Does Wisdom Increase with Age?

ONE stereotype of wisdom is a wizened Zen-master smiling benevolently at the antics of his pupils, while referring to them as little grasshoppers or some such affectation, safe in the knowledge that one day they, too, will have been set on the path that leads to wizened masterhood. But is it true that age brings wisdom? A study few years ago in North America, by Igor Grossmann of the University of Waterloo, in Canada, suggested that it is. In as much as it is possible to quantify wisdom, Dr Grossmann found that elderly Americans had more of it than youngsters (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22933459). He has, however, now extended his investigation to Asia—the land of the wizened Zen-master—and, in particular, to Japan. There, he found, in contrast to the West, that the grasshoppers are their masters' equals almost from the beginning.

Dr Grossmann's study, just published in Psychological Science, recruited 186 Japanese from various walks of life and compared them with 225 Americans. Participants were asked to read a series of pretend newspaper articles. Half described conflict between groups, such as a debate between residents of an impoverished Pacific island over whether to allow foreign oil companies to operate there following the discovery of petroleum. (Those in favour viewed it as an opportunity to get rich; those against feared the disruption of ancient ways and potential ecological damage.) The other half took the form of advice columns that dealt with conflicts between individuals: siblings, friends and spouses. After reading each article, participants were asked “What do you think will happen after that?” and “Why do you think it will happen this way?” Their responses were recorded and transcribed.

Dr Grossmann and his colleagues removed age-related information from the transcripts, and also any clues to participants' nationalities, and then passed the edited versions to a group of assessors. These assessors were trained to rate transcribed responses consistently, and had been tested to show that their ratings were statistically comparable with one another.

The assessors scored participants' responses on a scale of one to three. This attempted to capture the degree to which they discussed what psychologists consider five crucial aspects of wise reasoning: willingness to seek opportunities to resolve conflict; willingness to search for compromise; recognition of the limits of personal knowledge; awareness that more than one perspective on a problem can exist; and appreciation of the fact that things may get worse before they get better.

A score of one on any aspect indicated a participant gave no consideration to it. A score of two indicated some consideration. A score of three indicated a great deal of consideration. Each participant's scores were then added up and mathematically transformed to create an overall value within a range of 0 to 100 for both interpersonal and intergroup wisdom.

The upshot was that, as Dr. Grossmann had found before, Americans do get wiser with age. Their intergroup wisdom score averaged 45 at the age of 25 and 55 at 75. Their interpersonal score similarly climbed from 46 to 50. Japanese scores, by contrast, hardly varied with age. Both 25-year-olds and 75-year-olds had an average intergroup wisdom of 51. For interpersonal wisdom, it was 53 and 52.

Taken at face value, these results suggest Japanese learn wisdom faster than Americans. One up, then, to the wizened Zen-masters. But they also suggest a paradox. Generally, America is seen as an individualistic society, whereas Japan is quite collectivist. Yet Japanese have higher scores than Americans for the sort of interpersonal wisdom you might think would be useful in an individualistic society. Americans, by contrast—at least in the maturity of old age—have more intergroup wisdom than the purportedly collectivist Japanese. Perhaps, then, you need individual skills when society is collective, and social ones when it is individualistic. All of which goes to show that the real root of wisdom is this: do not assume, little grasshopper, that your prejudices are correct.

April 7, 2012, The Economist (http://www.economist.com/node/21552165)

Wisdom

Although we use the word "wise" in everyday language, we struggle to adequately define it. It is like "intelligence"...we know when we see it, but it manifests in so many ways, one definition can never really cover it.

Consider the results of the studies in the Vaillant text. Age is NOT correlated with being wise! However, being wise IS correlated with aging successfully!

Some of the definitions offered in Vaillant are very well-suited to the work we do with persons with mental illness. Many of them have to do with pragmatic abilities to survive and adapt to life and its challenges. I remember a number of clients I have had over the years who equated their own personal development and wisdom to having simply survived their teens and twenties with mental illness. Studies indicate that individuals with mental illness appear to become more stable after age 40. They have learned to be "wise" in the ways in which they need to live in the world.

Assessment

Lesson 3 Discussion (for online course only)

In the healthy aging portion of this lesson there is reference to the six dimensions that Vaillant uses to differentiate between the Happy-Well and the Sad-Sick person. For this discussion share what challenges individuals with mental illness may face to obtain healthy aging. What do you think a mental health worker could do to help those individuals? What have you learned from family members who may have struggled in their life?

Lesson 3 Quiz

1. Interview two people of diverse age who you think have a degree of wisdom. Based on the definitions of wisdom in your textbook, justify your selection of these individuals as "wise" and share what wisdom each of those individuals shared with you.
2. Describe the ways in which we may identify "wisdom" in our clients.