Susanne Wurm

University of Greifswald · Institute of Community Medicine

Longitudinal effects of subjective age on adult health and survival are well-documented (Westerhof et al., 2014). This systematic review provides an updated and expanded evaluation of the state of the field. A systematic search in PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed resulted in 103 articles: 19 articles from the 2014 meta-analysis and 84 n...

Worldwide population aging has greatly increased the diversity of the “aging enterprise.” Research has established a solid portfolio of evidence showing that positive and negative views of aging represent independent resilience or risk factors for health, well-being, and longevity. Indeed, the effects of views of aging remain significant beyond the...

Some 2 decades ago, Levy et al. (2002) published their seminal study on the impact of SPA on mortality over a period of 23 years. Our study aimed at replicating and extending these findings. Based on a large German population-based sample of individuals aged 40+ (N = 2,400), for whom mortality was also documented over 23 years (1996–2019), we inves...

This is the first study to analyze the association of accelerometer-measured patterns of habitual physical activity (PA) and sedentary behavior (SB) with serum BDNF in individuals with coronary heart disease. A total of 30 individuals (M = 69.5 years; 80% men) participated in this pre-post study that aimed to test a multi-behavioral intervention. A...

With increasing age, the experience of both chronic conditions and serious acute health events (e.g., stroke) becomes more likely. Consequently, most younger and older individuals consider aging primarily as a phase of life with increasing physical and cognitive decline. At the same time, the fact that aging is also associated with gains and growth...

Background: The future of work in Germany is shaped by megatrends like globalization, automatization, digitization, and the demographic change. Furthermore, mass customization and the increasing usage of AI even in manual assembly offers new opportunities as well as it creates new challenges. Objective: The trend towards mass customization in tu...

Reports an error in "Gain- but not loss-related self-perceptions of aging predict mortality over a period of 23 years: A multidimensional approach" by Susanne Wurm and Sarah K. Schäfer (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Advanced Online Publication, Feb 24, 2022, np). In the original article, there was an error in the third sentence in t...

Some two decades have passed since Levy et al. (2002) published their seminal study on the impact of self-perceptions of aging (SPA) on mortality over a period of 23 years in this journal; we aimed at replicating and extending these findings against the background of recent discussions in the research on subjective aging. Based on a large German na...

This encyclopedia brings together a comprehensive collection of work highlighting established research and emerging science in all relevant disciplines in gerontology and population aging. It covers the breadth of the field, gives readers access to all major sub-fields, and illustrates their interconnectedness with other disciplines. With more than...

Purpose Individualised interventions are recommended to tackle malnutrition in older adults, but approaches for nursing home (NH) residents are scarce. This study investigated the effects of an individualised nutritional intervention in NH residents with (risk of) malnutrition. Methods In a pre-post study, 6 weeks (w) of usual care were followed b...

Views on aging (VoA) such as attitudes toward own aging, awareness of aging or subjective age, have a large impact on outcomes related to positive development in later life. Recent research in this domain has focused on complex research designs and inter-systemic linkages at different levels. Indicators of short-term variability of VoA have increas...

A large body of research indicates that self-perceptions of aging (SPA) play an important role for health in later life. Hence, more research on SPA and correlates is needed, especially in old age and poor health, where negative SPA tend to prevail. Recent studies identified personality as an important correlate of SPA in young-old and relatively h...

Objectives: For most populations, implementation intentions (IIs) facilitate physical activity (PA). However, for older adults, previous studies found mixed evidence for the effectiveness of this behaviour change technique. To examine which characteristics of IIs predict successful enactment, the content of older participants' IIs formed within a...

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most serious health and economic crises of the 21st century. From a psychological point of view, the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences can be conceptualized as a multidimensional and potentially toxic stressor for mental health in the general population. This selective literature review provides an overview...

Background The Patient Health Questionnaire-8 (PHQ-8) is a screening questionnaire of depressive symptoms. However, it is unknown whether it is equivalent across time and between groups of individuals. The aim of our paper was to test whether the PHQ-8 has the same meaning in two groups of individuals over time. Methods Primary care patients were...

Background Previous studies have pointed to the impact of self-perceptions of aging (SPA) on self-reported physical function in later life. However, less is known about associations of SPA with objectively measured physical function, especially gait. Research that examined other psychological variables and objectively measured gait has focused on s...

Introduction Stroke is the leading neurological cause of adult long-term disability in Europe. Even though functional consequences directly related to neurological impairment are well studied, post-stroke trajectories of functional health according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health are poorly understood. Part...

Self-perceptions of ageing (SPA) are important predictors of health in later life. However, research on antecedents of SPA other than age stereotypes is scarce. To address this gap, this study investigates the impact of personal value priorities beyond age stereotypes on SPA. Can values as the motivational basis of attitudes and evaluations predict...

The article “Views on ageing: a lifespan perspective”, written by Anna E. Kornadt, Eva-Marie Kessler, Susanne Wurm, Catherine E. Bowen, Martina Gabrian and Verena Klusmann., was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 11 October 2020 without open access.

Proc Germ Nutr Soc 2021; 27: 51

Using data from the German Ageing Survey (Deutscher Alterssurvey, DEAS; N = 4,712), this study examined age-related change in three dimensions of self-perceptions of aging (SPA): perceptions of physical losses, social losses, and ongoing development. Participants ranged in age from 40 to 85 years at study entry (1996, 2002, or 2008) and were follow...

Introduction In Germany, an efficient and feasible transition from hospital to home for older patients, ensuring continuous care across healthcare settings, has not yet been applied and evaluated. Based on the transitional care model (TCM), this study aims to reduce preventable readmissions of patients ≥75 years of age with a transitional care inte...

Die Frage der »guten Behandlung im Alter« gehört zu den Schlüsselthemen unserer Gesellschaft. Wie können wir gute Pflege für ältere Menschen, eine adäquate medizinische Versorgung im Alter und ganz allgemein Generationengerechtigkeit erreichen? Wie kann Inklusion auch für Menschen mit Demenz oder stigmatisierenden psychischen Erkrankungen erreicht...

Dietary intake and requirements in nursing home (NH) residents vary individually, but concepts for individualised interventions are currently lacking. Therefore, we present an individualised modular nutritional intervention concept for NH residents with (risk of) malnutrition and describe its application and acceptability. Three enrichment modules—...

Background: Previous studies have pointed to the impact of self-perceptions of aging (SPA) on self-reported physical function in later life. However, less is known about the role of SPA for objectively measured physical function, especially gait. Research that examined other psychological variables and objectively measured gait has focused on singl...

In recent years many studies have shown that adults with more positive self-perceptions of aging (SPA) increase their likelihood of aging healthily. Other studies have documented historical changes in individual resources and contextual conditions associated with aging. We explored how these historical changes are reflected in birth-cohort differen...

For older adults, a hospital stay can lead to loss of physical function and frailty. It is therefore important to investigate factors for recovery after hospitalization. Recent studies suggest negative self-perceptions of aging (SPA) as a potential risk factor in the context of serious health events. This ongoing longitudinal study investigates how...

A robust body of evidence points to the importance of views on aging (VoA) in influencing developmental outcomes in later life. Now that this connection has been well-established, research has turned to examine mechanisms, processes, and pathways by which VoA and health are interconnected throughout adult development. The presentations in this symp...

Views on ageing (VoA) have special relevance for the ageing process by influencing health, well-being, and longevity. Although VoA form early in life, so far, most research has concentrated on how VoA affect later middle-aged and older adults. In this theoretical article, we argue that a lifespan approach is needed in order to more fully understand...

A number of longitudinal studies have pointed to the long-term impact of different views on aging (VoA) on health in later life, whereas the reverse relationship has rarely been examined. Serious cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction or stroke are life-threatening events which might in turn lead to changes in VoA. The present longitud...

This is a review paper on health, diseases and aging, written in German language. It addresses the interested public.

Zusammenfassung. Die COVID-19-Pandemie als multidimensionaler und potenziell toxischer Stressfaktor führt auch in Deutschland zu psychischen Problemen in der Allgemeinbevölkerung und wird voraussichtlich einen Anstieg der Inzidenz- und Prävalenzraten psychischer Störungen bedingen. In diesem Positionspapier erfolgt daher eine wissenschaftlich diffe...

Aims: To investigate latent patterns of alcohol use and bingeing by gender and their association with depressive symptom severity and individual depressive symptoms. Design: Cross-sectional data were collected January 2017 to March 2018 as part of a joint screening recruiting for different intervention studies. Setting: Ambulatory practices an...

Objectives: Subjective aging, including subjective age and self-perceptions of aging (SPA), predicts health-related outcomes in older adults. Despite its association with cardiovascular risk factors, little is known about the association between subjective aging and the incidence of cardiovascular disease. Therefore, the present study examined whe...

Several studies have demonstrated beneficial effects of views on aging (VoA) on health, while the reverse relationship is seldom in focus. Serious health events (e.g., myocardial infarction) are life-threatening and remind individuals of the finitude of life possibly changing their VoA. The present study investigates the effect of cardiovascular ev...

Aging is often associated with inevitable biological decline. Yet research suggests that subjective aging-the views that people have about their own age and aging-contributes to how long and healthy lives they will have. Subjective age and self-perceptions of aging are the two most studied aspects of subjective aging. Both have somewhat different t...

Historisch betrachtet ist die Lebensphase „Alter“ die jüngste Lebensphase. Steigende Lebenserwartung und die Einführung der Rentenversicherung haben seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts dazu beigetragen, dass aus einem kurzen Lebensabend nach Beendigung des Arbeitslebens eine eigenständige nachberufliche Lebensphase geworden ist, die es mit neuen Inhalte...

Self-perceptions of aging (SPA) are a resource in later life. As aging is accompanied with perceptions of the finitude of life, it is assumed that perceived residual lifetime may play a role in the relationship between SPA and health behavior. Among older adults aged 65 years and older, the present study tested whether the relationships between gai...

Objective: Longitudinal studies have consistently shown beneficial effects of positive self-perceptions of ageing (SPA) on health. However, SPA are more often negative than positive, particularly in older adults. For this reason, the present study tested the effectiveness of an intervention to promote more positive SPA in the context of an exercis...

Recent studies point to social change of age stereotypes and their increasing negativity during the last decades. This has recently been described as paradox because of improved living situations of older adults. However, self-perceptions of aging (SPA) do not need to follow the same trend as age stereotypes, in particular in older adults. This stu...

The term multiple diseases is often used interchangeably with multimorbidity and usually refers to two or more chronic diseases. The term comorbidity also refers to multiple diseases but more strongly emphasizes that one or several diseases co-occur with one primary disease. It reflects one important facet of a multidimensional health concept and c...

This chapter presents a model that explains the origins of ageism at the individual level among different age groups. The model is based on three theories. Terror management theory provides an explanation for the roots and motives of ageism towards old age groups among young and middle-aged groups as well as among the young-old age group. Stereotyp...

Bereits Seneca prägte vor rund 2.000 Jahren mit seiner Aussage »Das Alter ist nämlich eine unheilbare Krankheit« die bis heute aktuelle Vorstellung, Älterwerden sei unweigerlich mit körperlichen Verlusten und Krankheit verbunden. Was bedeutet es für unsere eigene Gesundheit und Langlebigkeit, wenn wir solche Bilder vom Altern haben ? Sind positiver...

Personal views on aging, such as age stereotypes and subjective aging, can affect various health outcomes in later life. For the past 20 years or so, a large body of experimental and longitudinal work has provided ample evidence for this connection. Thus, it seems timely to better understand the pathways of this linkage. The majority of existing st...

Zusammenfassung Der demografische und soziale Wandel erfolgt aufgrund einer Veränderung der Altersstruktur und des Erwerbslebens insbesondere von Frauen, zunehmender kultureller Diversität, ungleichen Bildungschancen von Kindern und Jugendlichen sowie regionaler Variation in den Versorgungsangeboten. Die Bewältigung der Aufgaben erfordert flexible,...

Wie Menschen ihr eigenes Älterwerden erleben ist neben objektiven Lebensbedingungen wie der Gesundheit, dem Einkommen oder den Haushalts- und Familienstrukturen ein wichtiger Aspekt zur Beschreibung der Lebenssituation von Menschen in der zweiten Lebenshälfte. Individuelle Altersbilder umfassen Vorstellungen, die eine Person vom Alter als Lebenspha...

Gesundheit ist ein mehrdimensionales Konzept (vgl. Kapitel 8), das nicht nur die körperliche, funktionale und psychische Gesundheit umfasst, sondern auch die subjektive Gesundheitsbewertung berücksichtigt (WHO 2002). Die subjektive Gesundheitsbewertung, das heißt, wie Menschen sich gesundheitlich fühlen und ihre Krankheit(en) und Einschränkungen ei...

Background and objectives: The importance of self-perceptions of aging (SPA) for health and longevity is well documented. Comparably little is known about factors that contribute to SPA. Besides individual factors, the context a person lives in may shape SPA. Research has so far focused on country-level differences in age stereotypes, indicating t...

Objective: Although health generally deteriorates with advancing age, how older adults evaluate their health status (i.e., their self-rated health, SRH) remains rather positive. So far, however, little is known about how SRH in old age may change in the face of an abrupt health decline. Because change/stability in SRH may reflect not only change/s...

Views on aging (VoA) are known as important resource for health in old age. Few studies have investigated contextual factors influencing VoA. Cross-cultural studies suggest: individuals in countries with rapid demographic change (DC) have more negative VoA. The contact hypothesis, however, postulates that individuals living in regional contexts wit...

A common desire among all people is to live long and healthy, yet many individuals experience health-related losses, not only in very old age but also from midlife on. Starting from epidemiological findings on population health, the presentation will go into different predictors of healthy aging. Based on the International Classification of Functio...

Previous studies have shown impressively the preponderance of negative views on aging (VoA), in particular in older adults. On the contrary, portrayals of older people in the media have become more positive and individuals born later are healthier in old age compared to those born earlier. Thus, VoA may have changed to the positive in Germany betwe...

Findings on the impressive impact of individual views of aging and old age (VoA) on health and longevity call for a better understanding of these views. Previous studies have examined VoA as well as preparation for age-related changes mainly on the individual level without broadening the perspective to contextual influences. In contrast and based o...

Zusammenfassung Körperliche Aktivität ist für gesundes Älterwerden bedeutsam und daher fester Bestandteil von Präventionsmaßnahmen, insbesondere bei Personen mit Herz-Kreislauf-Erkrankungen. Allerdings sind die meisten älteren Erwachsenen nicht ausreichend körperlich aktiv. Im vorgestellten Projekt wird eine Intervention zur Förderung von positiven...

According to Bandura’s social-cognitive theory, perceptions of somatic and affective barriers are sources of self-efficacy. This longitudinal study compares general indicators of health barriers with measures of perceived somatic and affective barriers to predict self-efficacy and accelerometer-assessed physical activity in a subsample of n = 153 (...

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to perform an intended action in the future and is necessary for regular physical activity (PA). For older adults with declining PM, planning strategies may help them to act upon their intentions. This study investigates PM as a moderator in a mediation process: intention predicting PA via planning...

Objective: A randomized controlled trial (RCT) was conducted to evaluate a three-hour face-to-face physical activity intervention in community-dwelling older German adults with four groups: The intervention group (IG) received behaviour change techniques (BCTs) based on the HAPA plus a views-on-ageing component to increase physical activity (PA)....

Retaining perceptions of autonomy is a key component of successful aging. Perceived autonomy refers to the capacity to make and enact self-directed decisions. These perceptions are often threatened in older adults with multiple illnesses, when functional limitations resulting from these illnesses impede the enactment of self-directed decisions. Reg...

Objectives: Large longitudinal studies show that negative self-perceptions of aging can be detrimental for health outcomes. However, negative self-perceptions of aging (i.e., associating aging with physical losses) might be adaptive because they prepare individuals for serious health events (SHEs), resulting in short-term positive effects as oppos...

Previous studies have demonstrated that while health factors lose importance for the individual conceptualization of self-rated health (SRH) with advancing age, subjective well-being (SWB) factors gain in importance. The present study examined whether this age-related pattern differs between educational groups. Longitudinal data of adults aged 40 y...

Background Illness perceptions predict important outcomes, e.g. coping, adherence and well-being. Less is known about the sources of illness perceptions, in particular the role of environmental factors such as primary care supply. Purpose This study examines whether and how primary care supply (on district level) affects individual illness percep...

Previous studies have shown that some predictors of self-rated health (SRH) become more important with age, while others become less important. Although based on cross-sectional data, these findings are often interpreted as age-related changes in evaluation criteria. However, results could be due to cohort effects as well. We attempted to disentang...

Objective: Positive self-perceptions of ageing are associated with better health; however, little is known about the potentially underlying mechanisms. The present longitudinal study examines whether the relationship between self-perceptions of ageing and self-rated health is mediated by physical activity in older adults with multiple chronic cond...

In this chapter, we carry out a narrative review of the longitudinal impact of subjective aging on health and survival. We have a specific focus on the different pathways which can explain the relation of subjective aging to health and survival. We focus on the three most common conceptualizations of subjective age: (a) age identity, (b) self-perce...

Evidence is accumulating on the effects of subjective aging-that is, how individuals perceive their own aging process-on health and survival in later life. The goal of this article is to synthesize findings of existing longitudinal studies through a meta-analysis. A systematic search in PsycInfo, Web of Science, Scopus, and Pubmed resulted in 19 lo...

Volunteering is presumed to confer health benefits, but interventions to encourage older adults to volunteer are sparse. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial with 280 community-dwelling older German adults was conducted to test the effects of a theory-based social-cognitive intervention against a passive waiting-list control group and an active...

Self-perceptions of aging, important indicators of successful aging, are closely linked to health. Previous research has mainly examined the role of individual factors on self-perceptions of aging, but health is partly dependent on contextual factors such as primary care supply. This study therefore examined whether the impact of diseases on self-p...

Objective: The effects of self-efficacy beliefs on physical activity are well documented, but much less is known about the origins of self-efficacy beliefs. This article proposes scales to assess the sources of self-efficacy for physical activity aims and to comparatively test their predictive power for physical activity via self-efficacy over tim...

Objective: Physical activity is a key factor for healthy ageing, yet many older people lead a sedentary lifestyle. Traditional physical activity interventions do not consider the specific needs and views of older adults. As views on ageing are known to be related to health behaviours, the current study evaluates the effectiveness of prompting posi...

Abstract Objectives: First, to replicate previous findings on the detrimental effect of negative self-perceptions of ageing (SPA) on physical health outcomes and to expand them to the prediction of mental health; second, to test whether an optimistic outlook to the future can buffer the effect of negative SPA on physical and mental health outcomes....