Hobby engagement and mental wellbeing among people aged 65 years and older in 16 countries.

ABSTRACT: Growing aging populations pose a threat to global health because of the social and psychological challenges they experience. To mitigate this, many countries promote hobby engagement to support and improve mental health. Yet, it remains unclear whether there is consistency in benefits across different national settings. We harmonized measures of hobby engagement and multiple aspects of mental wellbeing across 16 nations represented in five longitudinal studies (N = 93,263). Prevalence of hobby engagement varied substantially across countries, from 51.0% of Spanish respondents to 96.0% of Danish respondents. Fixed effects models and multinational meta-analyses were applied to compare the longitudinal associations between hobbies and mental wellbeing. Independent of confounders, having a hob

SUBMITTER: Mak HW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10504079 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature