Age friendly approaches - the missing link

In other words, resilience is a psychological and emotional phenomenon which, as the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Centre for Ageing Better’s (2017) “Transitions in Later Life” programme is showing, can be strengthened through interventions which enable older people to access and benefit from a variety of humanistic psychological techniques (e.g. positive psychology, mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy). There is a significant and growing evidence base which shows how internalised ageist attitudes negatively affect how long people live; the incidence of illness and the ability to recover from it; functional abilities such as walking speed and activities of daily living; cognitive ability and memory performance; health-enhancing behaviours and the will to live; and finally, emotional wellbeing and mental health (for an overview, see Robertson, 2017). [...]by instigating self fulfilling prophecies (i.e. loneliness is just something you cannot avoid in old age).