The difference between mental health and men­tal disorder has never been clearly stated (Qualls, 1999) . Most scholars avoid the issue entirely or try simply to say what mental health or psychopathol­ogy is not. How to tell the difference between normal or abnormal behavior is hard to define precisely, because expectations and standards for behavior […]

LEARNING OBJECTIVES • How are mental health and psychopathology defined? • What are the key dimensions used for categorizing psychopathology? • Why are ethnicity and aging important variables to consider in understanding mental health? J anet lives alone in a small apartment. Lately, some of her neighbors have noticed that Janet doesn’t come to church […]

10.1 MENTAL HEALTH AND THE ADULT LIFE COURSE Defining Mental Health and Psychopathology • A Multidimensional Life-Span Approach to Psychopathology • Ethnicity, Aging, and Mental Health 10.2 DEVELOPMENTAL ISSUES IN ASSESSMENT AND THERAPY Areas of Multidimensional Assessment • Factors Influencing Assessment • Assessment Methods • Developmental Issues in Therapy 10.3 THE BIG THREE: DEPRESSION, DELIRIUM, […]

As we have seen, personality change has important implications for promoting emotional well-being in older adulthood. In fact, some studies suggest that health and an emotionally stable personality are extremely important factors for life satisfaction among the very old (e. g., Hilleras et al., 2001). Thus, it is not simply health and financial security that […]

People’s beliefs about the appropriate characteristics for men and women reflect shared cultural beliefs and stereotypes of “masculinity” and “femininity” (Best & Williams, 1993; Huyck, 1999; Sinnott & Shifren, 2001). Across a wide age range in U. S. soci­ety, women are traditionally described as weaker, with lower self-esteem, less active, more concerned with affiliation, and […]

Who was the investigator, and what was the aim of the study? How people see themselves is an important part of their sense of well-being. However, previous research on well-being in late life has been conducted without theoretical guidance (Ryff, 1989). Consequently, many researchers approached well-being from the perspective of loss; that is, researchers assumed […]

For many adults, the relationship they have with a god or divine being is a key aspect of their identity. In addition, when faced with the daily problems of living, older adults use their religious faith more than anything else, including family or friends, as a coping mechanism (Krause, 2003; McFadden, 1996) . When asked […]

Another important aspect of self-concept and cre­ating a scenario about ourselves is the ability to project ourselves into the future and to speculate about what we might be like (Markus & Nurius, 1986). How do we do this? Projecting ourselves into the future involves creating possible selves that rep­resent what we could become, what we […]

As we have seen, an important aspect of identity in adulthood is how one integrates various aspects of the self. Self-perceptions and how they differ with age have been examined in a wide variety of stud­ies and are related to many behaviors. Changes in self-perceptions are often manifested in changed beliefs, concerns, and expectations. Self-concept […]

A second and related approach to understanding identity formation in adulthood is Whitbourne’s (1987, 1996c) idea that people build their own conceptions of how their lives should proceed. The result of this process is the life-span construct, the person’s unified sense of the past, present, and future. There are many influences on the development of […]