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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Spirituality promotes better health outcomes and lowers anxiety about aging
— the importance of spiritual dimensions for baby boomers as they enter older adulthood | | Author(s) | Elizabeth MacKinlay, Richard Burns |
| Journal title | Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging, vol 29, no 4, October-December 2017 |
| Publisher | Taylor and Francis, October-December 2017 |
| Pages | pp 248-265 |
| Full text* | http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15528030.2016.1264345 |
| Annotation | Baby boomers present unique challenges to aged care service provision. Like previous generations baby boomers face challenges of ageing. Spirituality in later life, understood largely as meaning in life, is crucial to wellbeing. Little has been studied about this dimension of ageing for baby boomers. This mixed methods study used survey and focus groups methods to investigate spirituality in a sample of 143 baby boomers. Participants comprised staff, children of adults in care and Uniting Church congregational members. The study examined associations between physical and mental health, and ageing anxiety with spirituality and whether baby boomer spirituality buffered the impact of negative life events. Focus groups revealed fears of future frailty, loss and fears of dementia. Religious affiliation in the study was lower, yet spirituality was important, even with those without religious affiliation. Closeness of association of staff with older people in their care seemed to account for lower levels of fear of older people amongst staff, but higher fears of future loss compared with the other groups. Higher levels of spirituality were related to better mental and physical health and lower anxiety about and fear of ageing, and buffered the impact of negative life events where they occurred. (JL). |
| Accession Number | CPA-171020225 A |
| Classmark | BG: CC: D: ENP: EX: TR: DR |
| *Online access to the full text may require a payment |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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information about this article, and many others, can be found on the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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