People with high levels of distrust towards the next risk more than the others to develop dementiaat least judging by the conclusions of a study published in Neurology.
“According to previous research, those who are convinced that the motivations of others are selfishness and personal profit have a greater frequency of heart disease, but this is the first study on the relationship between distrust in the neighbor and dementia” explains Anna-Maija Tolppanen, researcher at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio and co-author of the article, underlining that the results obtained are a further demonstration that the personal vision of life can have a personal vision of life. Impact on mental healthproviding important ideas on how to reduce the risk of dementia.
To get to their conclusions, the researchers administered 1,449 people with an average age of 71 a test for dementia at the beginning and end of the study, and a questionnaire to measure the distrust.
“The questionnaire has shown to be reliable, and the scores obtained have been stable over time,” the researcher resumes, explaining that the interviewees had to respond if they agreed or not with statements such as: “I believe that most people mint to be successful”, or “it is better not to trust anyone” and still “most people do not hesitate to lie in order to take advantage of the circumstances”.
Based on the scores obtained, the participants were divided into three groups: low, moderate or high levels of distrust in others; And during the observation period that lasted approximately 10 years 361 participants died, but 46 developed dementia.
“Well, by statistically controlling confounding variables, such as hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and smoking, people with high levels of noise were likely to develop dementia three times higher than the most arranged people towards others” concluded Tolppanen.
This suggests that a psychological intervention capable of intervening on these personological aspects, if present to a significant extent, can reduce the risk of dementia in old age.
Obviously the study has many limits, but sheds light on the importance of psychological factors in preparing for the debut of apparently exquisitely organic and genetically determined problems such as senile dementia.
