With A Purpose In Life You Will Live Longer

By Margarita Nahapetyan

With a purpose in life you are going to live longer, according to scientists at Rush University Medical Center, who say that focus, intention and having a meaning in life are associated with lower mortality rates among older adults.

And it appears not to matter that much what the purpose is, or whether the purpose involves a goal that is ambitious or modest. "It can be anything -- from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books," said a lead author of the study, Dr. Patricia Boyle, PhD, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

For the study purposes, Dr. Boyle and her colleagues looked at more than 1,200 community-dwelling elderly individuals, who participated in two ongoing research studies - the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. None had dementia. The investigators evaluated all the participants at baseline, and then followed them for the period of 5 years.

At the very beginning, the subjects were asked questions about their life purpose, and had to rate themselves on different areas that were supposed to evaluate the tendency to derive meaning from life and to feel that they were working toward goals. According to Dr. Boyle, the average score on the sense-of-purpose measurement was 3.7 out of possible 5.

When comparing scores, the investigators revealed that those participants who had a higher sense of purpose, had nearly 50 per cent less the risk of dying during the follow-up period, compared to people whose sense of purpose was lower. The findings held true even after accounting for other factors, such as depression, neuroticism, disability, the number of medical conditions and income. The association of purpose in life with mortality did not differ among men and women, as well as among white people and African-Americans. During the study period, 151 participants died.

The investigators reported that significant associations with mortality were found with three particular items on the purpose of life questionnaire to determine the study participants' agreement with the following statements: "I sometimes feel as if I have done all there is to do in life;" "I used to set goals for myself, but that now seems like a waste of time;" and "My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant to me."

Dr. Boyle said that she and her team were very excited about their discovery because the findings suggest that positive factors such as having a sense of purpose in life are critical in people's lives and contribute to their health. The experts noted that there is very little knowledge about the relationship of purpose of life with other demographic characteristics, and that is why future investigations on the matter are needed in order to find out whether the association of purpose of life with lethal outcome might be modified by other factors which were not studied in the current research, such as how religious a person may be. In addition, researchers suggest that future studies should analyze whether purpose in life can be enhanced in older individuals with interventions.

The findings, published in the June 15 issue of the journal, Psychosomatic Medicine, are available online at www.psychosomaticmedicine.org.