Fortune often favors the bold, and for Marc Blesoff, a decision a few years back is going to result in hard data that will provide insights on Oak Park’s views on aging and mental health.
Back then, Blesoff, chair of the village’s aging in communities commission, had read a book by Yale professor Dr. Becca Levy titled “A Town Without Ageism.” It’s about her trip through northern Vermont where she happened upon a town that had the inherent sort of relationships that minimized ageism.
That got Blesoff ruminating.
“I’m thinking, ‘This is pretty good information,’” he said, but what about examining a place that is urban and racially and economically diverse that’s adjacent to a large metropolitan area?
In other words, why not look at Oak Park?
“I sent her an email and she responded to my email and we were off and running,” Blesoff said.
The result was a over a year-long research study wrapping up this summer that will “look at what our view of aging affects our experience of aging,” said Linda Francis, local co-project coordinator with Julie Bach. Other key participants were Dr. Monika Robinson from Midwestern University, an Oak Park resident, and Pamela Mahn, Oak Park Township’s senior services director.
“What we wanted to do was to look at the experience of folks in Oak Park and how it lines up with what she has seen elsewhere,” Francis said, “and an added element is what effects may come from introducing more opportunities for agency in the aging experience and the views they have of their own aging.”
Here’s the key: Levy also published a book titled “Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Determine How Long & How Well You Live.” In it, Levy posits that in places where people had a more positive view on aging, and didn’t assign negative attributes to aging, people tended to live longer and healthier lives.
Levy said data from the Oak Park study will be collated and reviewed in the fall by her and graduate students, with results to follow.
And based on her prior research, there is indeed a link between age and mental health, but not what you might think. The study will add to those learnings.
“There (are) some of the factors that you would think would be more prevalent in later life that (that) tend not to be,” Levy said. “There is the stereotype that mental health gets worse, (but) the prevalence is a little bit lower later in life. Happiness and satisfaction tend to go up later in life.”
In the book, Levy says “our age beliefs determine the kind and amount of stressors that make it through to our bodies and psyches. And these stressors, in turn, can take a toll on our mental health.
“In the first study to determine how age beliefs impact our physiology, I found that positive age beliefs serve as a barrier against stress, whereas negative age beliefs amplify it.”
But what about Oak Park? The results will tell the story, but it’s already clear that the data will be comprehensive. Francis and Bach coordinated about 15 groups that met multiple times in various locations throughout the village over the last year to expose them to Levy’s work in the form of materials, discussions and exercises. There were pre- and post-study surveys, and participants also could elect to take part in a project focused on tasks like examining what one might change in the community regarding aging, or a way to bring information to certain people.
“That’s the agency part,” Francis said.
Again, it’s TBD what the study’s results will be, but Blesoff is very interested.
“There was an article in the Journal of Geriatrics, and what it shows is almost 50% of the people over 65, they improve while they are getting older, both in terms of cognitive and physical attributes,” he said. “That’s counterintuitive to what we’ve learned – young is good, old is bad.
“If that’s what you think, that’s what you get. That’s the thing about mental health impacting quality of life.”