Book Review: How Healthy Are We? A National Study of Well-Being at Midlife
[July 2004 - CDC's Preventing Chronic Disease] ... Overall, How Healthy Are We? answers the title question through research establishing midlife as a time when most adults have a positive view of physical health, have established supportive family relationships, are pleased with their financial situation, have a good quality of life, and have control and mastery of their work. Education, socioeconomic standing, race, and gender affect all of the above. How Healthy Are We? also can serve as a basis for brainstorming community-based approaches for tackling chronic health issues and for devising new methods to encourage behavioral change. For example, an awareness of gender differences in health-maintenance behavior, noted in Chapter 1, could change approaches to promoting weight loss or smoking cessation for men and women. Because the MIDUS survey included individuals aged 25�74, a more complete picture emerges on midlife in relation to the other life stages. How Healthy Are We? differs from other texts on midlife by presenting this expanded perspective. Some texts define midlife from a traditional psychological or biological perspective using staging or physical changes. Others take a health-management approach, focusing on specific aspects of midlife such as parenting or sexuality, or examining midlife in the context of larger societal trends such as divorce, two-income families, and longer life expectancy. ...