The well-being of community-dwelling near-centenarians and centenarians in Hong Kong a qualitative study

BMC Geriatrics

Research Article

Hi-Po Bobo Lau¹  Chun-Fong Noel Kwok²  Siu-Lan Karen Cheung³  Wai-Ching Paul Wong⁴  Man-Yee Grace Chan⁵  Yee-Man Angela Leung⁶  Wai-Man Chan⁷ 

[1] Department of Psychology, Hong Kong SAR, China;Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Hong Kong SAR, China;Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Hong Kong SAR, China;Sau Po Centre on Ageing, Hong Kong SAR, China;Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Hong Kong SAR, China;Sau Po Centre on Ageing, Hong Kong SAR, China;Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, Hong Kong SAR, China;Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Hong Kong SAR, China;Sau Po Centre on Ageing, Hong Kong SAR, China;Department of Nursing, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China;The Department of Health, Hong Kong SAR, China;

关键词: Ageing;    Hong Kong SAR;    Chinese culture;    Community and public health;    Health and well-being;    Psychology;    Psychosocial issues;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2318-14-63

 received in 2014-02-04, accepted in 2014-04-30,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundHong Kong has one of the highest life expectancy rankings in the world. The number of centenarians and near-centenarians has been increasing locally and internationally. The relative growth of this population is a topic of immense importance for population and health policy makers. Living long and living well are two overlapping but distinct research topics. We previously conducted a quantitative study on 153 near-centenarians and centenarians to explore a wide range of biopsychosocial correlates of health and “living long”. This paper reports a follow-up qualitative study examining the potential correlates of “living well” among near-centenarians and centenarians in Hong Kong.MethodsSix cognitively, physically, and psychologically sound community-dwelling elders were purposively recruited from a previous quantitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted.ResultsFour major themes related to living long and well emerged from the responses of the participants: (a) Positive relations with others, (b) Positive events and happiness, (c) Hope for the future, and (d) Positive life attitude. Specifically, we found that having good interpersonal relationships, possessing a collection of positive life events, and maintaining salutary attitudes towards life are considered as important to psychological well-being by long-lived adults in Hong Kong. Most participants perceived their working life as most important to their life history and retired at very old ages.ConclusionsThese findings also shed light on the relationships between health, work, and old age.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wong et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.