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Review
. 2020;13(1):4-10.
doi: 10.2174/1874609812666191023130117.

The Concept of Successful Aging: A Review Article

Fatemeh Estebsari  1 , Maryam Dastoorpoor  2 , Zahra Rahimi Khalifehkandi  3 , Azadeh Nouri  4 , Davoud Mostafaei  5 , Meimanat Hosseini  1 , Roghayeh Esmaeili  6 , Hamidreza Aghababaeian  7
Affiliations
Review

The Concept of Successful Aging: A Review Article

Fatemeh Estebsari et al. Curr Aging Sci. 2020.

Abstract

Background: With the increasing number of elderly people in the world, usage of concepts and terminology related to this phenomenon has substantially increased. One concept in this context is successful aging. The purpose of the present study is to extract and introduce a common concept to be used in studies on measuring successful aging.

Methods: This is a review study. First, by searching the databases of Magiran, Noormags, Medlib, Irandoc, Iranmedex, Barakat Knowledge Network System, Civilica, SID, ISI Web Of Science, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct and search engines, Google Scholar and Elmnet as well as using standard keywords such as elder, elderly, aging, and successful aging, all related published articles during the period 1995 to 2017 were retrieved. A total of 3417 documents were retrieved. By removing 3390 unrelated, duplicate and unusable documents, 27 articles were included in the study after quality control.

Results: The findings of the study were categorized in three areas: "defining successful aging by focusing on dimensions", "successful aging principles" and "factors influencing successful aging". Reviewing various studies, we found that the definition of successful aging deals with cognitive action, perception, control, life satisfaction, and ethics. Successful aging is also defined as having inner feelings of happiness and satisfaction with life for the present and the past. Sometimes successful aging is also considered to be survival with health.

Conclusion: Health care professionals as community health supporters can use the results from the present study for providing the grounds for successful aging. Then, they can use the designed successful aging program for preserving and promoting active and healthy aging for every elderly person in old age.

Keywords: Elder; Iranmedex; aging; cognitive action; elderly; successful aging..

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Figures

Fig. (1)
Fig. (1)
The Rowe and Kahn’s successful aging model in 1997. (A higher resolution / colour version of this figure is available in the electronic copy of the article).
Fig. (2)
Fig. (2)
Rowe and Kahn's successful aging model revised by Crowther [61]. (A higher resolution / colour version of this figure is available in the electronic copy of the article).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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