Older adults who can deal with, and adapt to, challenges in life have a lower risk of dying overall, according to a study published Tuesday in BMJ Mental Health.
Mental resilience is an active process affected by factors such as sex, genes and hormones that regulate the body’s stress response. It can vary throughout different stages of life, the researchers say.
The team evaluated data from the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) from 2006 to 2008. The participant base included over 10,000 people with an average age of 66; 59% of them were women. The researchers followed up with people until death or the end of May 2021, whichever came first. The average tracking period was 12 years. During that time, almost 3,500 people died.
The researchers evaluated factors like perseverance, calmness, a sense of purpose, self-reliance and the notion that certain experiences must be faced alone. On a 0 to 12 scale based on those factors, the average score was 9.18.
A survival analysis revealed that those in the group with the highest mental resilience scores were 53% less likely to die in the next 10 years compared with those who scored lowest.
Resilience scores were divided into four groups ranging from lowest to highest resilience scores and linked to 10-year survival probabilities. After adjusting for potential confounding factors, the authors saw a decrease in the risk of death by 20.2% in the second group, 26.8% in the third group and 38.1% in the fourth group compared to the first group, which had the lowest resilience scores.
“Various factors, including but not limited to, meaning in life, positive emotions, self-rated health, and satisfaction with social support, have been identified as potential influences on psychological resilience,” the authors wrote.
“Triggering these positive emotions may enhance the protective effects of psychological resilience and mitigate the negative impact of accumulated adversity on mental health in adults,” the authors added.
