Uc Science Today

There’s long been an assumption that the mental health of older people mirrors their declining physical and cognitive function. But according to a University of California, San Diego study, despite physical ailments, aging adults seem to get better over time. In the same study, Dilip Jeste found high levels of depression and anxiety among adults in their 20s and 30s. It made him wish that there were more studies looking into the value of intergenerational activities. "There has been some work of that kind in the past, but I think we need larger scale, better studies in which you can have younger people having an older person, and they become partners or a team with mentorship in both directions. The younger ones are teaching the older ones, let’s say, about technology; and the older ones are teaching the younger ones about how to live life and so on. And we need to measure the outcomes in terms of not just their satisfaction, but even biological measures." And this would help develop broader interventions