The Mental Health of Older Americans: A Case for Healthy Life Expectancy

• In Event: 067 - Section on Aging and the Life Course Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 14. Subjective Well-Being, Generativity and Healthy Aging

Abstract

The proportion of the American population that is age 65 and older is growing rapidly. Simultaneously, mental health problems amongst the elderly are on the rise. The difficulty then becomes unpacking the complex relationships surrounding mental illness, as they pertain to this increasingly-plagued, ever-growing portion of the population. Elderly individuals experience a set of stressors unique to their age, period, and cohort. Thus, a life course perspective is employed to best understand their stress experiences, as they relate to mental health outcomes. Additionally, measures of healthy life expectancy are being adopted as measurements of years of life left free of disease/illness. As increasing attention is given to the critical state of elderly mental health, it is crucial that measurements of healthy life expectancy adopt mental health measures into their assessment.

Author

• Andrea Tilstra, University of Colorado - Boulder