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（由申请人提供）：世界上 60 岁以上人口的比例正在以前所未有的速度增加。鉴于这种趋势，研究老年人的身心健康势在必行。孤独感等心理社会因素对于了解老年人的整体健康状况至关重要，因为孤独感的增加与老年人的功能衰退和死亡风险增加有关。老年人的孤独感可能部分是由于有意义的社交活动受到干扰造成的。事实上，生育力被定义为致力于他人福祉的关注和活动，特别是年轻一代及其相关组成部分，例如感觉对社会有用或被需要，通常包含在成功老龄化的模型中。此外，对生育力的更好认识与老年人更好的健康结果和长寿有关。因此，孤独的老年人可能特别受益于旨在提高生育能力认知的有针对性的心理干预，这可能会通过增加社会有用感来改善社会联系感，并改善健康结果。 NIA R03 应用程序的目的是研究健康和衰老背景下社会心理过程与促炎症反应之间的关系。为此，拟议的研究将调查旨在提高孤独者对生育力认知的干预措施的效果。 老年人的身心健康结果。鉴于促炎症活动与孤独感和不良健康结果有关，该研究还将研究干预措施对炎症生物标志物（即循环和刺激的促炎症细胞因子和促炎症基因表达）的影响。参与者 (n=70) 将被随机分配接受为期 6 周的干预，旨在增强对生育能力或控制条件的认知。在干预前后，所有参与者将完成身心健康的自我报告测量并抽血（以评估炎症的生物标志物）。据推测，与对照组相比，生育干预的参与者将表现出：1）身体和心理健康结果得到改善，2）从干预前到干预后，促炎症活动减少。此外，据推测，生物促炎活性的减少将改善健康结果。本研究将有助于增进人们对生殖能力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。这可能会提供一种低成本、省力的方法来改善老年人的健康状况，特别是那些最容易受到不良健康状况影响的人，例如孤独的人。