Study: Psychological Factors May Help Predict Mortality Risk

Certain psychological factors may be stronger indicators of mortality risk than variables such as chronic medical conditions and unhealthy behaviors, according to new research.

Investigators from the University of Geneva and the University of Oxford examined 29 years’ worth of data from the Manchester Longitudinal Study of Cognition to study 6,203 adult patients ranging in age from 41 years to 96 years at the time the study began. The authors evaluated the cognitive performance of these participants in 5 areas—crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, verbal memory, visual memory, and processing speed. The researchers administered tests up to 4 times in a 12-year span, assessing patients’ baseline performance and change in performance over time in each area.
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The team also assessed participants’ subjective reports of lifestyle factors such as perceived health, number of prescribed medicines, sleep patterns, hobbies, leisure activities, and social interactions. Ultimately, the authors gauged the relative importance of a total 65 different variables in terms of their ability to predict mortality risk, finding that subjective health and mental processing speed were 2 of the strongest predictors; with better perceived health and smaller decreases in processing speed linked to a lower risk of early death.

In addition, female participants were found to be at lower mortality risk, with the researchers also finding a connection between years of smoking tobacco and a greater risk of early death.

The “most unexpected finding” was that individuals’ self-ratings of their own health “are a remarkably strong predictor” of mortality risk, says Patrick Rabbitt, PhD, a professor at the University of Oxford and a study co-author.

This result, was reached after accounting for a number of factors, such as intelligence and socio-economic advantage, adds Rabbitt, and “is independent of any particular pathology, known to the medic, from which they may be suffering.”

While indices such as self-perceived health “can be assessed in their own right in diagnoses of general health, it is important to note that our study does not explore follow-up questions related to implications for medical interventions,” adds Stephen Aichele, PhD, a psychological scientist at the University of Geneva, and the study’s lead author.

“However, to speculate, decrements in processing speed have been linked to diabetes, cardiovascular problems, and to cerebral white matter lesion prevalence,” says Aichele. “So medical interventions targeting those issues may beneficially influence processing speed, and, by extension, mitigate mortality risk.”

Self-perceived health, he says, is “likely a proxy for numerous, interrelated processes that influence life span. Therefore, it is less clear what reduced self-perceived health implies for intervention strategies at the level of the individual person.”

—Mark McGraw

Reference

Aichele S, Rabbitt P, et al. Think fast, feel fine, live long: a 29-year study of cognition, health, and survival in middle-aged and older adults. Psychological Science. 2016. doi: 10.1177/0956797615626906.