Psychosocial factors for influencing healthy aging in adults in Korea

BACKGROUND: Healthy aging includes physical, psychological, social, and spiritual well-being in later years. The purpose of this study is to identify the psychosocial factors influencing healthy aging and examining their socio-demographic characteristics. Perceived health status, depression, self-esteem, self-achievement, ego-integrity, participation in leisure activities, and loneliness were identified as influential factors in healthy aging. METHODS: 171 Korean adults aged between 45 and 77 years-old participated in the study. Self-reporting questionnaires were used, followed by descriptive statistics and multiple regressions as inferential statistical analyses. RESULTS: There were significant differences between participants’ general characteristics: age, education, religion, housing, hobby, and economic status. The factors related to healthy aging had positive correlation with perceived health status, self-esteem, self-achievements, and leisure activities, and negative correlation with depression and loneliness. The factors influencing healthy aging were depression, leisure activities, perceived health status, ego integrity, and self-achievements. These factors were able to explain 51.9%. CONCLUSIONS: According to the results, depression is the factor with the greatest influence on healthy aging. Perceived health status, ego integrity, self-achievement, self-esteem, participation of leisure activities were also influential on healthy aging as beneficial factors.