Mental Health

Perhaps at no other time of year does a lack of friends become so glaring. If you’re not invited to holiday gatherings or not getting together with some buddies for a holiday gift exchange, this can be an especially painful time to acknowledge your loneliness and lack of friendships. Research…

The writer and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin once said, “We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.” The challenge, as an older adult, is maintaining and sustaining those long-term friendships while seeking out newer friendships as life evolves in your later…

It’s not inevitable that you’ll feel lonely as you get older, but it is common among older adults (estimates are that more than one-third of adults aged 45 and older feel lonely). And as we’ve previously written, it’s a feeling that can deeply impact both your physical and mental health….

As with most things in life, men and women tend to do things differently. When it comes to aging, men fare better in certain areas and women tend to do better in others. However, when it comes to marriage, the impact on healthy aging now seems clear: Men seem to…

Despite (or maybe because of) the ongoing aging of the world’s population, ageism continues to be a problem worldwide. A recent United Nations publication declared, “It is estimated that every second person in the world holds ‘moderately or highly ageist attitudes’.” Moreover, because of ageism, it’s estimated that economies worldwide…

It’s one of the sad rights of passage as you get older to experience loss. Whether it’s your parents, a spouse, another loved one, or a friend, few of us reach our later years without experiencing loss several times over. And just because you are exposed to loss doesn’t mean…