Morganti Francesca
Department of Human and Social Sciences, University of Bergamo, I-24129 Bergamo, Italy.
CHL-Centre for Healthy Longevity, University of Bergamo, I-24129 Bergamo, Italy.
Geriatrics (Basel). 2024 Jul 12;9(4):93. doi: 10.3390/geriatrics9040093.
Studying aging now requires going beyond the bio-psycho-social model and incorporating a broader multidisciplinary view capable of capturing the ultimate complexity of being human that is expressed as individuals age. Current demographic trends and the lengthening of life expectancies allow the observation of long-lived individuals in full health. These super-agers are no longer an exception. Indeed, individuals can have a good quality of life even over age 70 and living with chronic or neurodegenerative diseases. This change is driven in part by the cohort effect observed in people who are about to age today (e.g., better schooling, more advanced health conditions, and technologization) but more so by the gradual overcoming of ageist views. An aged person is no longer seen as a quitter but rather as one empowered to direct their own trajectory of potentially healthy longevity. According to this vision, this article proposes a situated lifespan perspective for the study of aging that integrates pedagogical models of developmental ecology with psychological theories of optimal experience to understand the individual motivational perspective on aging. At the same time, it does not disregard analyzing the daily and cultural contexts in which everyone situates and that guide aging trajectories. Nor does it forget that aging people are body-mind (embodied) organisms that, with contexts and through motivations, seize opportunities for action (affordances) to evolve in an optimal way during their lifespan. This theoretical reflection sheds new light on the aging process and on future trends in healthy longevity research.
如今，研究衰老需要超越生物-心理-社会模型，纳入更广泛的多学科视角，以捕捉随着个体年龄增长而展现出的人类终极复杂性。当前的人口趋势和预期寿命的延长，使得我们能够观察到完全健康的长寿个体。这些超级长寿者已不再是个例。事实上，即使年过70且患有慢性或神经退行性疾病，个体仍能拥有良好的生活质量。这种变化部分是由如今即将步入老年的人群中观察到的队列效应（例如，更好的教育、更先进的健康状况和技术化）所驱动，但更多是由于对年龄歧视观念的逐渐克服。老年人不再被视为失败者，而是被视为有能力掌控自身潜在健康长寿轨迹的人。基于这一观点，本文提出了一种情境化的寿命视角来研究衰老，该视角将发展生态学的教学模型与最优体验的心理学理论相结合，以理解个体对衰老的动机视角。同时，它也不忽视分析每个人所处的日常和文化背景，以及这些背景如何引导衰老轨迹。它也不会忘记，老年人是身心统一的生物体，他们在各种背景下，通过动机，抓住行动机会（可供性），以在其生命周期内以最优方式发展。这种理论思考为衰老过程以及健康长寿研究的未来趋势提供了新的视角。
