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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Older women's cognitive and affective response to moderate drinking | | Author(s) | Teena Zimmerman, Graham J McDougall Jr, Heather Becker |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 19, no 11, November 2004 |
| Pages | pp 1095-1102 |
| Source | http://www.interscience.wiley.com |
| Keywords | Older women ; Alcoholic beverages ; Mental health [elderly] ; Memory and Reminiscence ; Health [elderly] ; Evaluation ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | How do older women who drink moderate amounts of alcohol differ from those who do not drink on measures of cognitive function, memory, affect and health? A sample of 182 women (mean age 75) had Mini Mental Scale Examination (MMSE) scores of 28. None of the participants admitted to drinking more than 2 drinks a day. Caucasian women had the largest number of moderate drinkers (53% vs 47%), while the majority of African-American and Hispanic women reported not drinking. Moderate drinkers reported less depression, had higher self-reported health, performed better on instrumental everyday tasks (IADLs), had stronger memory self-efficacy, and used more strategies to improve memory performance. In addition, these women had higher performance on tests of executive function: attention, concentration, psychomotor skills, verbal associative capacities, and oral fluency. The circumstances under which people drink are complex and were not evaluated in this study. Rather than endorsing drinking behaviour, these findings suggest that future research might examine why older people make the decision to drink, the circumstances that predispose women to drink (alone or with others), and other qualities that characterise women drinkers aged 65+. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-041216226 A |
| Classmark | BD: YPP: D: DB: CC: 4C: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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