Mental Health

Everyone has an occasional day or two where they feel sad or down. But for the millions of older adults dealing with depression, those distressing feelings can be long-lasting, life-limiting and even life-threatening. Depression is not a natural aspect of aging, yet it can be a common occurrence and it’s…

Is the glass half full or half empty? Well, how you respond to this question could indicate whether you are at risk for dementia. Researchers at Yale University recently published a study in the science journal PLOS ONE that found that older people with a positive attitude toward aging have a…

Always room for a little good news. It turns out that many of our personality traits and cognitive skills don’t automatically flee the moment we hit 50. In fact, some of life’s most beneficial skills and emotions seem to improve and crest only as we approach our senior years. For example, satisfaction…

In older adults, differences between depression and dementia may be hard to discern. Memory loss, cognitive dysfunction and other symptoms can be present with either of these afflictions, and it’s not uncommon for an older person to be stricken by both simultaneously.  But it’s important to remember that even though…

Are you the same person you were when you were a young child? That question raises profound philosophic considerations but also has more pragmatic implications: how, if at all, has your personality changed as you have grown up and gotten older?  According to new research, your younger personality may have…

Since the late 1930’s researchers at Harvard have been studying two sets of men: those who were college students at Harvard and those from an economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Boston who had little in common with the students except age. Since their adolescence, these two groups have been studied to…