Seniors' life histories and perceptions of illness.

This life history research examined seniors' life experiences and perceived connections to illnesses. From a randomly selected sample of 190 seniors'interviews, 107 deemed to be the most expressive life stories were selected as the focus for this analysis. All seniors lived independently in a Canadian prairie city, were 60 years of age or older, Caucasian, European decent, had a chronic illness, and told of lives touched by the Great Depression and World War II. Given the paucity of research exploring seniors' life histories, these findings increase understanding of how life experiences shape seniors' identities. Four main themes emerged to describe seniors' lives: chaos, tragedy, quest, and romance. Findings reported here show that seniors with optimistic perceptions do not connect their life experiences with illnesses. Seniors with pessimistic perceptions frequently connect their life experiences with present illnesses and are most likely to remember past abuse and coping with abuse.