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Biomedical subjects

V Mattila

Publications and source records attributed to V Mattila.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1988

Intimacy and mental disorder in late middle age. Report of the TURVA project.

This study, which was carried out as part of the TURVA project on psychosocial adaptation in old age, is concerned with the significance of social support to people approaching retirement age. The population consisted of 200 urban dwellers and 189 rural dwellers, who were studied at the age of 62. The subjects were either about to retire in the near future or had already retired, and it was assumed that this event causes a certain amount of stress, which may lead to mental disturbance regardless of the amount of social support available to the individual. Intimate relationship and close friendship served as the measures of social support. Mental disturbances were assessed on the basis of the General Health Questionnaire (36-item version) and the number of psychic and especially depressive symptoms. The prevalence of mental disturbance and depressive symptoms was lowest in those people who lived in a close marital relationship and who also described their spouse as empathic. Psychic symptoms were most common in those people who said their relationship to their spouse was distant and who described them as unempathic. The subjects who were not married fell in-between these 2 groups regardless of whether they had an intimate relationship with someone of the opposite sex. A positive marital relationship seemed to provide a shield against depression, while a negative marital relationship tended to make the individual more vulnerable to depression. The role of a close non-marital friendship depended on the respondent's sex. In women, it was associated with a high prevalence of depressive symptoms.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1988

Measurement of life satisfaction. Developing a life satisfaction scale.

The purpose of this study was to develop a life satisfaction scale (LSS) suited for elderly Finnish people. The subjects were non-institutionalized elderly living in rural and urban areas in south-western Finland. They were interviewed for a prospective follow-up study (TURVA project) concerned with the psychosocial development of elderly people during retirement. Following the interview, the first version of the LSS was submitted to 339 respondents. It was completed and returned by 330 (97%). This version of the scale was then reduced to a 26-item version (LSS-A), which had a high reliability coefficient (Cronbach alpha 0.89). In factor analysis, LSS-A consisted of three main components: psychic balance, assessment of past life, and present happiness. An abbreviated 12-item scale (LSS-B) was also drawn up. When the number of items was reduced, the roles of psychic balance and present happiness were emphasized. The LSS, proved to be easy to use, its reliability was good, and the correlations between the sum score of LSS and the questions concerning life satisfaction in the interviews suggested fairly good validity. To further evaluate the validity and applicability of the scale, we need further studies in different types of elderly populations.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Mental health in the population approaching retirement age. Preliminary findings of the TURVA project.

The present paper deals with a Finnish long-term prospective study, the objective of which is to shed light on adjustment to retirement and old age. In this phase, only the preliminary findings of the initial survey carried out in 1982 are available. For the purposes of the study, a random sample of 200 individuals was drawn from among Turku inhabitants born in 1920. Another sample, consisting of 189 persons of the same age, was drawn from rural municipalities in the neighborhood of Turku. An extensive structured psychosocial interview could be conducted with a total of 339 subjects. The research methods used included e.g. the 36-item version of Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Relatively little mental disturbance was revealed in the interview, and no major differences occurred between the urban and the rural sample. Somewhat over one-third of both samples were probable psychiatric cases as defined according to the GHQ.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1987

Onset of functional psychoses in later middle age. Social-psychiatric considerations.

The onset of functional psychosis occurring in later middle age (45-64 years) was studied by comparing the life situation and personal history of 74 Turku patients admitted to the mental hospital for the first time with the corresponding information obtained for randomly selected controls of the same age and of the same sex. The annual first admission rate of functional psychoses was 81 per 100,000; there was no difference between men and women. The rate was highest in unmarried individuals and lowest in married individuals (167 vs. 56 per 100,000). Measured by many different indicators, the patients' prepsychotic social development had been clearly poorer than that of the controls during the corresponding period. Almost all patients had had a precipitating life change during the last 5 years preceding the onset of psychosis. Objective losses had occurred more often in the group of affective psychoses than in the other diagnostic groups. In the case of childhood losses, on the other hand, there were no difference between patients and controls or between the diagnostic groups.

Age Factors↗