Believe it or not, there are upsides to getting older.
Yes, your physical health is likely to decline as you age. And unfortunately, your cognitive abilities like learning new skills and remembering things is likely to suffer too.
But despite such downsides, research suggests that your overall mental health, including your mood, your sense of well-being and your ability to handle stress, just keeps improving right up until the very end of life.
Consider it something to look forward to.
In a recent survey of more than 1,500 San Diego residents aged 21 to 99, researchers report that people in their 20s were the most stressed out and depressed, while those in their 90s were the most content.
There were no dips in well-being in midlife, and no tapering off of well-being at the end of life.
Instead scientists found a clear, linear relationship between age and mental health: The older people were, the happier they felt.
Experts on the psychology of aging say the new findings add to a growing body of research that suggests there are emotional benefits to getting older.
“In the literature it’s called the paradox of aging,” said Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity, who was not involved in the work. “How can it be that given the many well-documented losses that occur with age, we also see this improvement in emotional well-being?”
As it happens, Carstensen does not think this is a paradox at all.
In her own work, she has found evidence that people’s goals and reasoning change as they come to appreciate their mortality and recognize that their time on Earth is finite.
“When people face endings they tend to shift from goals about exploration and expanding horizons to ones about savoring relationships and focusing on meaningful activities,” she said. “When you focus on emotionally meaningful goals, life gets better, you feel better, and the negative emotions become less frequent and more fleeting when they occur.”
The authors of the new work also suggest that improved mental health in old age could be due to the wisdom people acquire as they grow older. [...]
