Depression and anxiety are prevalent mental health issues worldwide, especially among parental caregivers. By expanding the family stress model, this cross-sectional study investigated the relevant factors associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and satisfaction with life among Malaysian parental caregivers of adolescent psychiatric patients. Data were collected through questionnaires (N = 207) across five major public hospitals through convenience sampling. Participants answered questionnaires measuring financial strain, caregiver burden, relationship quality, belief in mental illness, perceived COVID-19 stress, satisfaction with health services, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and life satisfaction. Findings revealed that relationship quality among spouses, COVID-19 stress and caregiver burden were significantly correlated with anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms and satisfaction with life. The multiple regression model also suggested that depressive symptoms (β = .613, p < .001), anxiety symptoms (β= .657, p < .001) and relationship quality among spouses (β = .264, p < .001) were the most influential predictors of anxiety symptoms, depressive symptoms and satisfaction with life respectively. By addressing the mental health needs of parental caregivers, this study can contribute to improving the overall quality of care and support provided to adolescent patients and their caregivers in Malaysia and beyond.

The personal pattern of coping with the stress associated with making decisions characterizes the way an individual makes choices and judgments. The Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ) analyses these personal patterns and has been used across various cultures in order to assess four main strategies: vigilance, buck-passing, procrastination, and hypervigilance. We sought to adapt and validate a Portuguese version of the MDMQ. Our study was conducted with a sample of 523 Portuguese people aged 18 or older. The questionnaire retained the original four scales, which represent four different decisional patterns, showing good reliability and validity – concurrent as well as predictive – and invariance for gender and age. The coping pattern with the highest mean was vigilance, while procrastination had the lowest mean. In contrast to other studies of the MDMQ, our sample had a more diversified distribution of age. Young adults were less capable than older adults of managing stress when making decisions, due to their higher levels of buck-passing, hypervigilance, and procrastination. Vigilance showed stronger correlations to positive affect, satisfaction with life, and better decisional self-esteem, while the remaining scales were related to negative affect, reduced decisional self-esteem, and lower satisfaction with life. These decision-making styles are chosen depending on time constraints, pressure, or other contextual characteristics. These results suggest that individuals resort to more convenient patterns according to their situation, and that these patterns of decision-making can be trained, developed, and improved.

International studies have demonstrated associations between sleep problems and poor psychological well-being; however, Canadian data are limited. This study investigated this association using cross-sectional baseline data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, a national survey of 30,097 community-dwelling adults, 45–85 years of age. Short sleep duration, sleep dissatisfaction, insomnia symptoms, and daytime impairment were consistently associated with a higher prevalence of dissatisfaction with life, psychological distress, and poor self-reported mental health. Long sleep duration was associated with a higher prevalence of psychological distress and poor self-reported mental health, but not with dissatisfaction with life. Associations between sleep problems and psychological distress were 11–18 per cent stronger in males. With each 10-year increase in age, the association between daytime impairment and life dissatisfaction increased by 11 per cent, and insomnia symptoms and poor mental health decreased by 11 per cent. Sleep problems in middle-aged and older adults warrant increased attention as a public health problem in Canada.

The present study was focused on the relationship between the subjective assessment of physical health and satisfaction with life (SWL) in older adults. The relationship itself was found in previous studies, but we postulated that it is moderated by ego-resiliency (ER). To verify this hypothesis, 124 Polish participants aged between 60 and 89 (mean = 71.72, standard deviation = 7.08) were asked to complete questionnaire measures of: self-assessed health (SAH; measured with seven items from the World Health Organization Quality of Life WHOQOL-BREF assessment), SWL (measured with the Satisfaction with Life Scale) and ER (measured with the Ego-Resiliency Scale ER89). The results confirmed the moderating role of ER by showing that the relationship between SAH and SWL was statistically significant only when ER was high or moderate, while there was no relationship for participants with low ER. To interpret these results, we postulate that ego-resilient older adults are more accurate in the assessment of health, i.e. their SAH reflects the objective condition more closely, which strengthens the relationship between SAH and wellbeing. ER is thus conceived as an important psychological resource that promotes the accuracy of SAH and, consequently, makes it a more robust predictor of SWL. We hypothesise that this is based on the positive relationship between ER and wisdom in older adults.

The aim of this study was twofold: (a) To validate a successful aging model in a Spanish older adult’s sample, and (b) to predict successful aging from psychosocial factors and physical activity. Participants were 725 Spanish older people, of whom 478 were women and 247 men, aged between 55 and 100 years. Of these, 501 were physically active and 197 persons did not practice physical activity. The sample was collected in three areas: Sport centers, day centers and public areas of several Spanish towns. Factorial validity of the Successful Aging Inventory was studied by confirmatory factor analysis, and four multiple regressions to predict each of the dimensions of successful aging (functional performance, intrapsychic factors, gerotranscendence, and spirituality) were estimated. The model of successful aging in Spanish elderly through the Successful Aging Inventory was adequate. The four multiple regressions predicted highly successful aging, with effect sizes of: R2 = .037 for spirituality; .267 for functional performance; .531 for intrapsychic factors; and .356 for gerotrascendece. A main conclusion derived from the results is that older people who do exercise achieve better aging. Another point is that aspects of health and life satisfaction are directly related to better aging while social aspects influence indirectly.

Wellbeing (WB) is a major topic of research across several scientific disciplines, partly driven by its strong association with psychological and mental health. Twin-family studies have found that both genotype and environment play an important role in explaining the variance in WB. Epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, regulate gene expression, and may mediate genetic and environmental effects on WB. Here, for the first time, we apply an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) approach to identify differentially methylated sites associated with individual differences in WB. Subjects were part of the longitudinal survey studies of the Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) and participated in the NTR biobank project between 2002 and 2011. WB was assessed by a short inventory that measures satisfaction with life (SAT). DNA methylation was measured in whole blood by the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip (HM450k array) and the association between WB and DNA methylation level was tested at 411,169 autosomal sites. Two sites (cg10845147, p = 1.51 * 10−8 and cg01940273, p = 2.34 * 10−8) reached genome-wide significance following Bonferonni correction. Four more sites (cg03329539, p = 2.76* 10−7; cg09716613, p = 3.23 * 10−7; cg04387347, p = 3.95 * 10−7; and cg02290168, p = 5.23 * 10−7) were considered to be genome-wide significant when applying the widely used criterion of a FDR q value < 0.05. Gene ontology (GO) analysis highlighted enrichment of several central nervous system categories among higher-ranking methylation sites. Overall, these results provide a first insight into the epigenetic mechanisms associated with WB and lay the foundations for future work aiming to unravel the biological mechanisms underlying a complex trait like WB.

This study aimed to assess the effect of satisfaction with food-related life on life satisfaction among inhabitants of the main municipalities of central Chile. A survey was applied to a sample of 1,277 people, distributed proportionally by municipality. The questionnaire included the following scales: SWLS (Satisfaction with Life Scale), SWFL (Satisfaction with Food-related Life) and the Health-Related Quality of Life Index (HRQOL). Questions were asked regarding eating habits inside and outside the home, time available for meals at home, the assessment of five sources of happiness and the demographic characteristics of those surveyed. An ordered logit model was proposed, in which the dependent variable was satisfaction with life. Satisfaction with life was significantly related to the respondent’s socioeconomic status, self-perception of health, degree of satisfaction with food-related life, monthly food expenditure, time available for supper with the family (p < .01); gender, self-reported number of days affected by mental health problems, frequency of supper with the family, the degree of agreement with respect to family being an important source of happiness (p < .05); and family size and frequency of food consumption in fast food outlets (p < .10). Satisfaction with life in the study sample is related to aspects associated with health, family and eating, and the family interaction associated with eating may play an important role in overall satisfaction with life.

This work examines the association between personality dimensions (extraversion and neuroticism) and subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is associated both with extraversion and neuroticism, and currently, neuroticism is generally considered the more important. A total of 368 students from the University of Rovira i Virgili completed the Extraversion and Neuroticism subscales of the revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Barrett, 1985), the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985), and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). Regression analyses revealed the personality variable of neuroticism as one of the most important correlates of subjective well-being. Regression analyses also showed that 44% of the variance of subjective well-being was accounted for by neuroticism, whereas extraversion only explained 8% of the variance.

Active ageing policies seek to increase the quality of life of older people in three areas: health, security and participation. This paper focuses on a specific type of participation: associations. Its objective is to explore the possible self-selection effects of this type of participation, using global subjective quality of life indicators (satisfaction with life) and domain-specific indicators (satisfaction with leisure, community social integration and emotional resources). For this, a structural equation modelling analysis was conducted, taking into account bi-directional relationships between the variables of interest. The data come from a conditions and quality of life survey conducted in 2008 among a sample of 1,106 individuals aged 60 or over, living in community-dwellings in Spain. The results illustrate a complex model of relationships in which associative participation is not statistically significantly associated with the satisfaction measures used. This highlights the importance of self-selection effects and raises the issue of the effectiveness of associative participation as a tool to enhance the life satisfaction of older adults.

The Quality of Life (QoL) in psychiatric patients is currently of great relevance. This study aims to examine, through a multi-informant approach, the QoL perception in schizophrenic patients, analyzing differences between the informants, as well as the relationship between negative symptoms and QoL. Participants were 32 schizophrenic patients, their caregivers (relatives or psychosocial educators; 25 and 3, respectively), and a team of four professionals of Outpatient Centers of Mental Health in Guipuzcoa, Spain. The assessment of patients’ QoL was obtained with application of Satisfaction with Life Domains Scale and Karnofsky Performance Status Scale. Self-informant QoL was assessed with Seville Quality of Life Questionnaire and Social Adjustment Scale Self-reported. The negative symptoms were measured with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale and the Scale for Assessment of Negative Symptoms. Patients showed an average high life satisfaction. There were significant discrepancies among informants’ reports, with the lowest evaluation given by the professional team and the highest by the patients. Evaluations made by caregivers and patients yielded similar results. These findings suggest that patients and their caregivers present a more optimistic perception of their QoL.

Counsellors need to be able to understand perfectionism in students, and the different forms that this perfectionism may take, in order to provide their students with the appropriate counselling services. This study investigated gender differences in perfectionism, and examined the relationship of perfectionism to general self-efficacy, life-satisfaction, academic achievement and satisfaction with academic achievement among a sample of 419 high school students (47.0% female, 53.0% male). Data were collected using five scales: (1) The Almost Perfect Scale — Revised (APS-R; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001); (2) the General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES; Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995); (3) the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985); (4) a single item scale for measuring satisfaction with academic achievement; and (5) a demographic information form. Results indicated that females are significantly more perfectionist than males. Adaptive perfectionists had higher self-efficacy, satisfaction with life, academic achievement and satisfaction with academic achievement than did both maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists. Furthermore, there were no significant differences between maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists on any of these variables. This implies that prevention and intervention programs should be designed to enable high school students to set realistically high standards.

The present study aims to analyze the relationships between community involvement, perception of family and school climate, and emotional and social problems in adolescents (satisfaction with life, non-conformist social reputation, and school violence). The sample was composed of 1884 (52% boys and 48% girls) adolescents aged from 11 to 17 years old (M = 13.7, SD = 1.4) from the Valencia Community and Andalusia. A structural equation model was calculated to analyze the data. The results indicated that adolescent community involvement was associated with positive perceptions of family and school climate, and school violence. Associations between the variables of the study included in the structural model were also analyzed as a function of gender. The relationship between school climate and social reputation was significant only for boys. Likewise, the association between community involvement and violent behavior was found to be significant only for boys. Finally, the results and their possible implications are discussed.

Background: This is the first study to analyze the psychometric properties of the International Wellbeing Index (IWI), which comprises the Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI) and National Wellbeing Index (NWI), among community-dwelling older adults.

Methods: The IWI was applied to 1106 community-dwelling adults aged 60 years and over. The sample was additionally assessed using scales for comorbidity, disability, mood, general orientation to life, social support, health-related quality of life, and two questions assessing satisfaction with life as a whole and with life in Spain. The PWI and NWI were separately analyzed for acceptability, internal consistency, convergent and discriminative validity, and precision. Linear regression analyses of the PWI and the NWI were also conducted.

Results: Mean scores were 71.0 ± 13.5 for the PWI and 49.5 ± 14.4 for the NWI. No floor or ceiling effects were detected. Cronbach's α was 0.88 for the PWI and 0.92 for the NWI. Factor analysis identified two factors in the IWI, and one factor in the PWI and NWI respectively. The PWI showed a correlation of 0.50 with the “satisfaction with life as a whole” item, and the NWI showed a correlation of 0.73 with the “satisfaction with life in Spain” item. There were significant differences in scores: in the PWI, according to gender, age, social support, education and depression; and in the NWI, according to education and depression. The regression model identified psychosocial, health and functional factors as determinants of the PWI (explained variance: 46.8%).

Conclusions: The IWI displays good acceptability and is a consistent, valid and precise measure of global quality of life in older adults.