Latest News
How to grow old happy and well
By
Jan 25, 2010 - 5:43:54 AM

 “I enjoy talking with very old people. They have gone before us on a road by which we, too, may have to travel, and I think we do well to learn from them what it is like.” (Socrates, in Plato’s The Republic)

The following is the Headmaster’s Address to the school in Assembly on Monday 17 January 2010

You may, I hope, remember that I was speaking last week about the research and findings of George Vaillant, head psychiatrist of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has tracked the life-experiences of well over 200 men from the time they were at university in the early 1940s to the present day.

Looking at his 200-plus human case studies, Vaillant found that there were seven major factors which predict a life of physical and mental good health. The first I told you about last week, namely the development of mature adaptations or defence mechanisms.

The other six major factors which contribute to a life of physical and mental good health are education, which is good news for you; stable marriage, which is good news for me; not smoking, which is good news for me but which I must admit is bad news for some of you; not abusing alcohol – which is bad news for this country given the level of alcohol abuse reported in the media recently - it costs the country £25billion a year, the equivalent of £415 a year for every man, woman and child in Britain, with around a quarter of the population drinking to a harmful level. The sixth indicator contributing to well-being is exercise, which is good news for you; and finally, seventhly, healthy weight, which is bad news for me (though I am at least trying to do something about it).

Almost equally important is what Vaillant found not to be contributory factors for a life of mental and physical well-being. Social ease (being good at social situations) – you might think that contributes a lot to happiness – but in fact it becomes less and less important as one gets older. ‘Childhood temperament’ also diminishes in importance over time: the anxious or shy young Harvard boys may have tended initially to do poorly when they left university, but by the time they were 70 they were just as likely to describe themselves as “happy and well” as were their more outgoing peers. Surprisingly, regular exercise in their college days turned out to be a better predictor of later mental health than it is of physical health.

Of course, one needs to be very careful about all these conclusions. I am not an expert in psychology and perhaps Mrs Beck is already tearing her hair out at my mistaken methodology or the invalidity of my conclusions. Let me pre-empt that a little by stating this: Vaillant is himself very clear that some of the factors mentioned may be either the cart or the horse – the cause or the symptom. Take alcohol abuse, for instance. In adult conversations, you sometimes hear: “Yes, his wife left him, and he’s taken to drink.” But is alcohol abuse a response to marital breakdown, or the cause of it? Social sciences can be inexact, and clearly, one has to be very careful in drawing conclusions which imply causal links.

However, Vaillant is in fact quite clear about what really contributes to well-being. The above seven factors, in his view, all feed into this one factor, which is the most important, namely the quality of one’s relationships. “It is social aptitude”, he says, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful ageing”. Warm connections with other human beings about whom you care – such relationships are necessary for well-being – that’s Vaillant’s conclusion. Such warm relationships don’t need to come from parents, though often they do, of course: but they could come from siblings, uncles, mentors, friends but, according to Vaillant, they provide the key to well-being.

Looking at his well over 200 human lab rats, Vaillant concludes that, apart from mature adaptations or defence mechanisms, the single best predictor of later-life adjustment and well-being is the health of the men’s relationships, by the age of forty-seven. When asked recently what he had learnt from the Harvard Study, Vaillant replied: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships with other people.”

Reflect on that a little in the week ahead – I will develop this theme next week.