Having found meaning in your life allows you to age better, whether physically or mentally.
We suspected it, science has proven it. People who find meaning in their lives are “happier and healthier” than others. So they age better. The results of this study were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
To conduct their study, researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine (USA) reviewed the records of 1042 adults who participated in the Successful Aging Assessment, conducted from January 2013 to June 2014. Participants were residents of adult communities in San Diego County. They ranged in age from 21 to 100 or older. The researchers asked them to identify with various statements such as “I am looking for a purpose or mission in my life” or “I have discovered a satisfying life purpose”. At the same time, each volunteer had to declare their physical and mental state and took part in a telephone interview where their cognitive state was assessed.
Using statistical models, the researchers found that most people aged 60 or over had found meaning in their lives. The more the age advanced, the more the correlation became important. Thus, it would seem that, although the search for meaning can be present in the mind at various times in life, when the latter is filled with friends and work, it tends to take a back seat as one is busy .
The medical field is beginning to consider these philosophical questions
“When you’re young, like in your twenties, you’re not sure about your career, your life partner and your personality. You are looking for meaning in life. When you start in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, you have more established relationships, maybe you’re married and have a family, and you’ve settled into a career. The search diminishes and the meaning of life increases. After 60 years things start to change. People retire and (may) start to lose their (sense of) identity. They begin to have health problems and some of their friends and family begin to pass away. They begin to search for the meaning of life again because the meaning they had before has changed,” says the study’s lead author, Dilip V. Jeste.
And for many people, finding meaning in life becomes a condition for a happy ending. The researchers thus found that the “presence of meaning” in life was associated with mental well-being. In contrast, cognitive function was negatively related to “meaning-seeking”. So, “those who have meaning in life are happier and healthier than those who don’t,” says Jeste. In conclusion, finding meaning in one’s life is a good way to thrive when one is old: it promotes a person’s physical and mental well-being as they age.
The medical field is beginning to recognize that the meaning of life is a clinically relevant and potentially modifiable factor that could be targeted to improve people’s well-being, the researchers say. “It’s an exciting time in this field as we seek to uncover evidence-based answers to some of life’s deepest questions,” comments Jeste, whose next research will focus on wisdom, loneliness and compassion. and how these factors can influence the search for meaning. Finally, “we also want to examine whether certain biomarkers of stress and aging are associated with seeking and finding the meaning of life.”
A reduced risk of developing Alzheimer’s or disabilities
In recent years, similar studies had already made the connection between finding meaning in life and aging well. In 2010, researchers published the results of a seven-year study conducted in Chicago in the United States on 951 elderly people, 155 of whom had developed Alzheimer’s disease.
During their work, they had noticed that people who had obtained a high score on a scale evaluating the presence of goals in life and the attribution of a meaning to existence had 2.4 times less risk to develop so-called “Alzheimer’s disease” than those with a low score. Additional analyzes had also shown that the presence of purpose in life and meaning in existence was associated with a lower risk of developing “mild cognitive impairment” (“MCI”).
Another study carried out within the framework of the same project explored the links between the fact of having goals in life and the risk of handicaps in the daily life of 970 elderly people without dementia. After a follow-up of up to eight years, the researchers had revealed that having found goals in one’s life and meaning in one’s existence greatly reduced the presence of disabilities in one’s daily life.
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