ISSN: 2578-5095
Authors: Ali Javadpour*, Peter Schofield and Mohammad Motamedi
Background: The term ‘resilience’ is applied with reference to a range of biological, psychological and social factors that enable people to survive in a meaningful way in the face of stressful situations and adversities. It is thought that resilience could impact on health status, and high level of resilience is protective against both mental and physical health. It is possible that long term health benefits are influenced by resilience and vice versa. Psychological resilience has been defined as a pervasive and flexible personality trait that helps an individual to cope well into a successful ageing. Successful ageing has been defined as mental, physical and spiritual vigor, into middle age and further years. Successful ageing has also been considered as freedom from disease and disability in the way that people can live independently in later life. Given that resilience represents complex psycho-social behaviors, it could potentially correlate with other gerontology concepts like successful ageing. Aim: In this study we investigated the correlation between resilience score and some indicators of successful ageing. In current study correlation between psychological resilience score and variables related to successful ageing are examined. Methods: Data was collected in the term one of Olfactory Stress Test longitudinal study at the Hunter Medical Research Institute in Newcastle. Baseline data was collected in 2013-2014 from 290 participant aged 65+ as part of Olfactory Stress Test longitudinal study at the Hunter Medical Research Institute in Newcastle. By using baseline data, we examined the associations between resilience score measured by CD-RISC and some emotional, cognitive and health related variables as indicators of successful ageing. Result: Initial analyses showed that resilience sore and scores measured mental health related factors such as DASS, CESD, melancholia score, DASS depression and Anxiety subscales were negatively correlated. Correlation analyses between resilience score and items related to cognitive performance revealed that variables such as IQ-code score, PQ-Code Score, MAC-Q, ARCS were negatively correlated and people with higher resilient score reported lower cognitive complaint by both participant and informant. Further analyses also showed that the level of physical activity was positively correlated with resilience score. There was a negative correlation between number of medical conditions and resilience score(p=0.013). people with more resilient suffering from lower physical illnesses. To check the predictability of mental health related indicators for resilience, emotional and cognitive variables were entered into stepwise regression model. The results showed that depressive symptoms were predictor for lower resilience and more resilience was a predictor for lower cognitive complaint. Discussion: Our finding is consistent with other studies investigated factors related to resilience in relation to successful ageing. Moreover, finding from this study supported the idea that psychological resilience could be a synonym for Successful ageing and these gerontology concepts could be interrelated in particularly for psychological of successful ageing.
Keywords: Psychological Resilience; Elderly; Successful Ageing
