Corey L. M. Keyes

Sherryl H. Goodman

Throughout the world, rates of depression are greater among females than males, and this gender gap emerges during adolescence and persists throughout adulthood. Until recently, women's health has centered on the topic of reproductive health, because research focused almost exclusively on biological and anatomical differences distinguishing men and women. Social and behavioral research on gender differences in health now employs multiple disciplinary frameworks and methodologies, and researchers seek to understand the higher rates of specific diseases and disorders in women and men. Symptoms of depression and the diagnosis of depression are more prevalent in women, and research that focuses on biological, psychological, and sociopolitical explanations for this gender gap should now be brought together to better inform efforts at treatment and prevention. Women and Depression is a handbook that serves to move toward a more integrative approach to women's depression in particular and mental health for all more generally.

A Handbook for the Social, Behavioral, and Biomedical Sciences

Women and Depression

Prem S. Fry

A typically pessimistic view of aging is that it leads to a steady decline in physical and mental abilities. In this volume leading gerontologists and geriatric researchers explore the immense potential of older adults to overcome the challenges of old age and pursue active lives with renewed vitality. The contributors believe that resilience capacities diminishing with old age is a misconception and argue that individuals may successfully capitalize on their existing resources, skills and cognitive processes in order to achieve new learning, continuing growth, and enhanced life-satisfaction. By identifying useful psychological resources such as social connectedness, personal engagement and commitment, openness to new experiences, social support and sustained cognitive activity, the authors present a balanced picture of resilient aging. Older adults, while coping with adversity and losses, can be helped to maintain a complementary focus on psychological strengths, positive emotions, and regenerative capacities to achieve continued growth and healthy longevity.

Life-Strengths and Well-Being in Late Life

New Frontiers in Resilient Aging

Jonathan Haidt

Psychology has made great strides in understanding mental illness, but how much has it learned about mental health? When people want to reflect upon the good life and how to live it, they turn to philosophers and novelists, not psychologists. The emerging field of positive psychology aims to redress this imbalance. In Flourishing, distinguished scholars apply scientific analyses to study the good life, expanding the scope of social and psychological research to include happiness, well-being, courage, citizenship, play, and the satisfactions of healthy work and healthy relationships. Their findings reveal that a sense of meaning and a feeling of richness emerge in life as people immerse themselves in activities, relationships, and the pursuit of intrinsically satisfying goals like overcoming adversity or serving one's community through volunteering. This provocative book will further define this evolving field.

Corey L. M. Keyes

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