Feeling Needed: Effects of Generativity on Health in Lonely Older Adults

被需要的感觉：生育力对孤独老年人健康的影响

• 批准号: 9134597
• 负责人: Naomi Ilana Eisenberger
• 金额: $ 7.7万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9134597
• 关键词: Adult; Affect; Age; Aging; Biological; Biological Markers; Blood; Cardiovascular Diseases; Cessation of life; Child; Control Groups; Disease; Elderly; Feeling; Gene Expression; Generations; Genetic Markers; Gerontology; Health; Health Benefit; Human; Inflammation; Inflammatory; Inflammatory Response; Intervention; Life; Link; Literature; Loneliness; Longevity; Measures; Mediating; Mental Depression; Mental Health; Modeling; Obesity; Outcome; Outcome Study; Pain; Participant; Pathway interactions; Patient Self-Report; Perception; Personal Satisfaction; Physical Function; Physiological; Play; Population; Process; Psychological Factors; Psychosocial Factor; Randomized; Recording of previous events; Reporting; Research; Risk; Role; Sleep; Smoking; Social isolation; Testing; Time; Well in self; aged; biopsychosocial; cost; cytokine; functional decline; group intervention; improved; inflammatory marker; intervention effect; mortality; novel; physical conditioning; physical inactivity; physical symptom; post intervention; psychologic; psychological symptom; social; therapy design; trend

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proportion of the world's population over age 60 is increasing at an unprecedented rate. Given this trend, it is imperative to study the mental and physical health of older adults. Psychosocial factors, such as loneliness, are critical in understanding the overall health of older adults, given that increased feelings of loneliness have been linked to functional decline and increased risk of mortality in older adults. Loneliness in older adults may be partially driven by disruptions in meaningful social engagement. In fact, generativity defined as concern and activity dedicated to the well-being of others, especially younger generations and its related components, such as feeling socially useful or needed, are often included in models of successful aging. Furthermore, greater perceptions of generativity have been linked to better health outcomes and longevity in older adults. Thus, lonely older adults may especially benefit from a targeted psychological intervention aimed at increasing perceptions of generativity, which may improve feelings of social connection through increased feelings of social usefulness, as well as improve health outcomes. The objective of this NIA R03 application is to investigate the relationships between social psychological processes and pro-inflammatory responses in the context of health and aging. To do so, the proposed study will investigate the effect of an intervention aimed at increasing perceptions of generativity in lonely older adults on physical and mental health outcomes. Given that pro-inflammatory activity has been linked to both loneliness and poor health outcomes, the study will also examine the effect of the intervention on biological markers of inflammation (i.e., circulating and stimulated pro-inflammatory cytokines and pro-inflammatory gene expression). Participants (n=70) will be randomly assigned to a 6-week intervention aimed at increasing perceptions of generativity or a control condition. During pre- and post-intervention sessions, all participants will complete self-report measures of physical and mental health and have blood drawn (in order to assess biological markers of inflammation). It is hypothesized that participants in the generativity intervention, compared to those in the control condition, will show: 1) improved physical and mental health outcomes and 2) decreased pro-inflammatory activity from pre- to post-intervention. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that decreases in biological pro-inflammatory activity will mediate improvements in health outcomes. The present study will help advance the understanding of the impact of generativity on the lives of older adults, including its effects on health and inflammatory activity. This may inform a low-cost and low-effort way to improve health outcomes in older adults, especially those who may be most vulnerable to poor health outcomes, such as those who are lonely.

 描述（由适用提供）：60岁以上的世界人口比例以前所未有的速度增加。鉴于这种趋势，必须研究老年人的身心健康。鉴于孤独感的增加与功能下降和老年人死亡的风险增加有关，诸如孤独感之类的社会心理因素对于了解老年人的整体健康至关重要。老年人的孤独感可能是由有意义的社会参与中的中断驱动的。实际上，被定义为致力于他人的福祉的关注和活动，尤其是年轻一代及其相关组成部分（例如在社会上有用或需要），通常包括在成功的衰老模型中。此外，对生成性的更多看法已与老年人的健康状况和寿命更好。这一点，孤独的老年人可能特别受益于旨在增加一代人看法的有针对性的心理干预，这可以通过增加社会有用感以及改善的健康结果来改善社会联系的感觉。该NIA R03应用的目的是调查在健康和衰老的背景下社会心理过程与促炎反应之间的关系。为此，拟议的研究将调查旨在提高孤独感的干预措施的影响 老年人的身心健康结果。鉴于促炎活性与孤独和健康状况不佳有关，该研究还将研究干预对炎症生物学标志物的影响（即循环和刺激促炎细胞因子和促炎性基因表达）。参与者（n = 70）将被随机分配给6周的干预措施，以增加对生成性或控制条件的看法。在干预前后，所有参与者都将完成对身心健康的自我报告测量，并抽血（以评估炎症的生物学标志）。假设与控制状况的参与者相比，将表明：1）改善身心健康的结果，以及2）改善了从干预前到干预后改善促炎性活动。此外，假设生物学促炎活性的降低将介导健康结果的改善。本研究将有助于促进对生成性对老年人生活的影响的理解，包括其对健康和炎症活动的影响。这可能会为改善老年人的健康状况，尤其是那些可能最容易受到健康状况不佳的健康状况，例如那些孤独的人的健康状况，尤其是那些可能最容易受到健康的健康状况，以改善老年人的健康状况。