This study compared opinions of successful aging among college students and older independent-living adults. Participants were 226 undergraduate students, 44 graduate students, and 59 independent-living older adults subjects. The participants were asked to rate the level of importance of 29 items in relation to their contribution to successful aging. The 29 items were divided into seven categories. Social and familial relationships, intrinsic values, nancial concerns, accomplishments, and cognitive functioning were viewed as contributing the most to successful aging. Independence was reported to be somewhat important, while physical appearance was reported as being least important. There were few differences between how young and old viewed successful aging. Only the categories of nancial concerns and physical appearance showed age-related differences, with older adults attributing a higher level of importance to nancial concerns and physical appearance than did the younger participants.

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The administrators of 92 nursing homes and rest homes in western Massachusetts were surveyed on their experiences with elderly residents with a history of psychiatric hospitalization and their willingness to admit such individuals in the future. A majority of those who had admitted deinstitutionalized elders with chronic psychiatric disorders reported having experienced severe problems with them. Most of the problems involved the resident going into crisis or producing some highly disruptive behavior. Although two-thirds of the facilities had admitted elders who had been deinstitutionalized from a public psychiatric hospital, only one-quarter clearly planned to do so in the future. Three quarters of the administrators reported that they did not have the support services that the deinstitutionalized elders in their facilities needed. A comparison of the services reported to be important and those reported to be available suggest that simply increasing the availability of psychiatric support services would probably not influence administrators to admit elders with chronic mental illness in the future.

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