British journal of health psychology
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This study examined relationships between quality of life (QoL) in older people and cognitive functioning in both abstract and real-world problem solving. ⋯ The present study replicates previous findings that abstract problem-solving ability is not related to QoL and supports the hypothesis that real-world or everyday problem-solving ability is associated with QoL in older people.
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Br J Health Psychol · May 2007
CommentMind the gap(s)... in theory, method and data: Re-examining Kanazawa (2006).
Kanazawa (2006) has put forward an evolutionarily grounded theory which claims that individuals in wealthier and more egalitarian societies live longer and stay healthier not because they are wealthier or more egalitarian but because they are more intelligent (2006: 637). The claim rests on an argument which asserts that general intelligence is a solution to evolutionarily novel problems and that most dangers to health in contemporary society are evolutionarily novel. Kanazawa also claims that this relationship does not hold in sub-Saharan Africa. ⋯ The methods used are inadequate because Kanazawa argues for causation from correlation and fails to consider alternative explanations. The IQ data are flawed for reasons to do with sample size and sampling, extrapolation and inconsistency across measures. Nor are they temporally compatible with the economic and demographic data.
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Br J Health Psychol · Feb 2007
Trajectories of recovery of quality of life in women after an acute cardiac event.
Female cardiac patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL) during the first year after an acute cardiac event was compared with age-weighted Australian population norms. The impact of age, event type and cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programme attendance on recovery was assessed. ⋯ Impairment of HRQoL in female cardiac patients is most pronounced at the time of the event, with most recovery occurring during early convalescence and full recovery in all domains by 12 months post-event.
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To measure levels of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress among survivors of a critical illness and to relate these symptoms to general health parameters. ⋯ A substantial proportion of patients who survive a critical illness show evidence of anxiety and depression up to 9 months later, and most of them also have symptoms indicative of post-traumatic stress. Delayed physical recovery may contribute to this psychological morbidity. ICU follow-up clinics should be able to detect patients suitable for psychological intervention.
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Br J Health Psychol · Nov 2006
Comparative StudyMind the gap... in intelligence: re-examining the relationship between inequality and health.
Wilkinson contends that economic inequality reduces the health and life expectancy of the whole population but his argument does not make sense within its own evolutionary framework. Recent evolutionary psychological theory suggests that the human brain, adapted to the ancestral environment, has difficulty comprehending and dealing with entities and situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment and that general intelligence evolved as a domain-specific adaptation to solve evolutionarily novel problems. Since most dangers to health in the contemporary society are evolutionarily novel, it follows that more intelligent individuals are better able to recognize and deal with such dangers and live longer. ⋯ They also show that an average IQ has a very large and significant effect on population health but not in the evolutionarily familiar sub-Saharan Africa. At the micro level, the General Social Survey data show that, while both income and intelligence have independent positive effects on self-reported health, intelligence has a stronger effect than income. The data collectively suggest that individuals in wealthier and more egalitarian societies live longer and stay healthier, not because they are wealthier or more egalitarian but because they are more intelligent.