The Importance Of Life Satisfaction

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My topic of choice is life satisfaction of those over the age of eighty-five. What I want to study is the life satisfaction of those who have lived far beyond most their own family members. The reason why I choose this topic is from a personal experience, from knowing a sweet elderly woman who is ninety-six yrs. old. The conversations I have had with her about her life, inspired me to dig deeper into what causes people to age well or to not age well. There is something to admire in elderly that have not only lived a very long time, but also lived out their years in happiness and satisfaction. In one study, they found that anxiety and depression among centenarians was almost non-existent, and said to have a high quality of life (Richmond, Law …show more content…

The articles used in this paper were found on the McKee library databases like EBSCO, JSTOR and Digital Commons Network. These articles were all peer reviewed and searched under keywords such as life satisfaction, centenarian, etc.
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Life satisfaction is influenced by connections with family and friends. Contact with the outside, world whether it is with family, friends, or neighbors can be important for the elderly. A research study examined physical, mental, and cognitive functions of those who have reached over the age of eighty-five found that 59% had regular contact with friends, 62% had contact with neighbors and 72% had contact with families. In the same sample of participants, anxiety and depression was mostly non-existent and reported to have a high quality of life, despite the physical limitations of aging. Most of the participants in the study had fair to good scores of self-related health, lower scores for self-sufficiency (Richmond, Law & Kay-Lambkin, 2011). The social relationships scored well, with many having of the participants have a positive outlook about living to an old age of hundred. The findings found that even with poorer functional ability, these centenarians were well adjusted to loss of function of …show more content…

Ardahan and Mart (2013) studied how outdoor activities correlate with aging. They found women who participant in outdoor activities, have a high monthly income, are married, have an occupation, will have higher life satisfaction. Those who are men, single, older, with no outdoor activities have a lower life satisfaction. Even though many of these outdoor activities require a younger age, those that did participate in outdoor activities had a higher life satisfaction (pg. 900). There were a few gaps and weaknesses in the literature found while researching this topic. One gap that was found was the daily habits of those who had a higher life satisfaction. The studies often did not include the activities of daily living of these individuals, which could hint to the health habits that might contribute the longevity. A weakness that some the research had been how subjective the data that was collected. Many of these studies just sent out surveys and had little interaction with the participants of the study. There was no way to see measure the accuracy of the surveys sent out to the

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