A Portfolio of Academic, Clinical and Research Work Including Successful Ageing: A Comparison of Psychiatric Service Users and Non-Users.

Background. This study investigate the concept of successful ageing in groups of newly-referred and longer-term users of psychiatric services for older people and healthy volunteers. Method In a cross-sectional study, a battery of measures were administered to 30 service users and 21 control participants who were aged between 66 and 92. Information was collected concerning ageing, mental health, self-esteem, life events, cognitive status and use of strategies for successful ageing. In addition, a variety of secondary factors including social support, financial strain, health and disability were measured. The three groups were compared, to determine whether there were differences between them on these measures. Results. Significant differences were found between the groups on measures of mental health, self-esteem, negative life events and ageing. In addition, high correlations were found between these variables. The three groups were well-matched for secondary variables such as age, social support, health, disability and financial strain. There were no significant differences between the groups on the strategies for successful ageing measure. However, this measure was found to be associated with mental health, ageing and self-esteem, but independent of life events and secondary variables. Conclusions. It is concluded that the differences found between the three groups may be attributable to the higher number of negative life events experienced by the two patient groups. However, the strategies for successful ageing measure seems to be independent of life events, and appears to measure a different construct from that which underlies mental health and self-esteem. It is concluded that using strategies of successful ageing (selection, optimisation and compensation) may be associated with benefits to mental health, self-esteem and ageing. A speculative model of the possible mechanisms underlying these relationships is outlined