In a recent study published within the journal Nature Medicine, researchers attempted to harmonize the measures for hobby engagement and its association with mental health amongst adults over 65 using five longitudinal studies across 16 countries and examined the variations in these associations.

Study: Hobby engagement and mental wellbeing amongst people aged 65 years and older in 16 countries. Image Credit: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock

Background

With the growing aging population worldwide, aspects corresponding to loneliness, deteriorating physical and mental health, and social isolation have gotten more apparent. Statistics from the United Nations indicate that the 65-year-old and older population is growing faster than another age group, and one in six people worldwide will probably be older than 65 by 2050. Moreover, while medical advancements have actually increased life expectancy, the healthy life expectancy, the common variety of years a person lives without disability, injury, and mental or physical illnesses, doesn’t show an identical increase.

Subsequently, a sustainable social care system is required to enhance the psychological well-being of older adults. Engagement in social activities is assumed to enhance mental well-being, and the pursuit of hobbies is believed to extend mental and cognitive stimulation while providing social support. Nonetheless, the assorted studies and meta-analyses which have examined the association between hobby engagement and mental health in older adults have either been at a single-country scale or haven’t used standardized measures, which makes the outcomes non-generalizable across the larger global population.

In regards to the study

The current study used data from five longitudinal studies conducted in England, Japan, the US, China, and 12 European countries and examined associations between improvements or alterations in mental health and hobby engagement. The combined dataset consisted of responses from over 90,000 participants, with a mean age of 71.7 to 75.9 years.

The study used a set effects model to check the longitudinal associations between changes in hobby engagements and changes in mental health while accounting for time-constant aspects, corresponding to medical histories, genetics, and psychological traits. Aspects that varied with time, corresponding to clinical conditions, sociodemographic characteristics, and difficulties with day by day activities, were also considered within the evaluation.

An odd least squares regression was also conducted to deduce the directionality of the association between hobby engagement and mental well-being. Multilevel models were run on the pooled datasets from all 16 countries to find out how much of the variance within the association between mental health and hobby engagement was related to the country.

Moreover, country-level aspects corresponding to the happiness index, gross domestic product per capita as a measure of country wealth, and life expectancy were examined individually to know which factor explained the variance higher. The researchers also explored whether these aspects might be used to moderate how hobby engagement influenced mental health in older adults.

The study analyzed mental well-being across 4 measures — self-reported health, life satisfaction, happiness, and depressive symptoms. The info was made comparable by harmonizing and recoding all of the variables and standardizing the end result variables. Hobby engagement was also recorded as a binary measure for every country, with a yes or no answer. Nine time-variable covariates were considered within the analyses, including age, partnership status, socioeconomic status, number of individuals within the household, household income, employment status, health profiles, and housing tenure.

Results

The outcomes showed that engaging in hobbies was related to a lower incidence of depressive symptoms and better levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and self-reported health amongst adults above the age of 65. Moreover, while macro-level aspects corresponding to the happiness index and life expectancy did influence the strength of the association, lower than 9% of the variance across countries was explained by these aspects.

Nonetheless, countries with higher life expectancy and happiness index scores had more adults over 65 engaged in pursuing hobbies, and the association between the pursuit and engagement in hobbies and aspects corresponding to self-reported health and life satisfaction was higher in such countries. Nonetheless, these associations didn’t appear to vary based on retirement status or gender or based on retirement age across countries.

Furthermore, the connection between mental well-being and hobby engagement was found to be bidirectional across a temporal scale, with a relentless negative and positive feedback loop between health outcomes and leisure activities.

Conclusions

Overall, the outcomes indicated a universal association between hobby engagement and mental well-being amongst older adults, with a rise within the pursuit of hobbies leading to a decrease in depressive symptoms and improved life satisfaction, happiness, and self-reported health.