Longevity and optimism

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Dec, 2005 by Robert A. Anderson

Eight hundred forty (840) general medical Mayo Clinic patients, mean age 35, were divided at baseline into optimists (n=124), mixed (n=518), or pessimists (n=197) on the basis of their answers to 298 MMPI questions: 86% were available for followup 30 years later. After all adjustments, optimists were living a mean of 19% longer than pessimists (p=.01).

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Marute T et al. Optimists vs Pessimists: survival rate among medical patients. Mayo Clin Proc 2000 Feb; 75(2):140-43

COMMENT: I have referred to this seminal study before. The 19% advantage to optimists translates to roughly 14 additional years of life. This dwarfs the extended years of life attributable to conquering cancer, wiping out heart disease or eliminating trauma. Can a pessimist be converted to an optimist? It is often not easy, but attitudes can be learned or "caught" from acquaintances, relatives, friends and medical practitioners. I have often had success by prescribing a two to three week arbitrary behavior shift utilizing the "as if" technique. The patient is asked to monitor his/her attitudes. On finding any pessimistic flavor at any given time, the task is to shift to an optimistic attitude as if it were already incorporated. Another way of looking at this is to play the "what if" game on the positive rather than the negative side of the ledger. My experience is that a three-week experience becomes very convincing, but it must be reinforced by a practitioner who is himself or herself, optimistic.