Trajectories of Pain in Very Old Age: The Role of Eudaimonic Wellbeing and Personality.

Pain is common in very old age and in the last years prior to death. However, little is known regarding longitudinal trajectories of pain in very old age and at the end of life. Moreover, whereas medical and morbidity-related factors contributing to pain are established, the role of psychosocial factors, such as eudaimonic wellbeing or personality as potential determinants of late-life pain trajectories has so far not been sufficiently investigated.

Associations of Wellbeing Levels, Changes, and Within-Person Variability With Late-Life All-Cause Mortality Across 12 Years: Contrasting Hedonic vs. Eudaimonic Wellbeing Among Very Old Adults.

Advanced old age has been characterized as a biologically highly vulnerable life phase. Biological, morbidity-, and cognitive impairment-related factors play an important role as mortality predictors among very old adults. However, it is largely unknown whether previous findings confirming the role of different wellbeing domains for mortality translate to survival among the oldest-old individuals.

Psychological vulnerability to daily stressors in old age: Results of short-term longitudinal studies.

A growing numbers of intensive longitudinal studies examine the short-term variability of behavior in response to daily stressors. Collectively, these studies address the vulnerability for stress-related emotional burden as assessed in terms of the intraindividual association between daily stressors and negative affect (NA). This article provides a brief overview of the relevant research on so-called affective reactivity to daily stressors and focuses on findings on development of age-related stressor reactivity across the adult lifespan.

Cohort- and age-related decline in elder's life satisfaction: is there really a paradox?

Absence of age-related decline in elder's life satisfaction (LS), found in several studies from the last quarter of the twentieth century, has been labelled a "paradox", as it contrasts with increasing psycho-social and health risks in old age. To explain these findings, the present study was based on the hypothesis of a cohort effect on the LS of those born in the first half of the twentieth century, which might have overlayed and thus obscured the age-related decline in cross-sectional studies. In addition, it was hypothesized that the age-related decline in LS accelerates over the old age period such that the "paradox" would not hold for old-old subjects.