This chapter presents an illustration of the complexities involved in studying ethnic and racial influences on psychosocial processes and how they are intimately tied to physical outcomes in later life. It focuses on psychology as a discipline, minority aging research during the last several decades has revealed the need for multidisciplinary and intersectional conceptual and research approaches. The chapter also focuses on the age, gender, socioeconomic, cultural, and racial and ethnic graded influences on life course development that eventuate in unequal burdens of psychological and physical health morbidity and mortality for certain groups in late life. No section on psychology could be complete without a discussion of religion and spirituality among racial and ethnic minorities. Generational processes are clearly implicated in ideas about the cyclical nature of poverty and health behaviors that are intricately linked with environmental factors and social influence.

This chapter presents an integrative approach to the psychological study of minority populations and the reduction of health disparities through positive nonmaterial resources. It provides a brief introduction to positive psychology and to the concept of early life origins of disease, highlighting the value of integrating these seemingly disparate literatures as a lens for studying health and broader aging processes among minority populations. Minority status whether based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), citizenship, religion, or other factors is a robust determinant of health, well-being, and success across the life span and intergenerationally. Positive psychology is relevant to health and development particularly physiological and psychological adaptation to stress across the life span, and even across multiple generations among humans in general and among minority populations in particular. Health inequalities are the result of unique challenges to successful psychological and physiological adaptation faced by minority group members.

This chapter provides selective review of research on religion and spirituality across three groups of racial and ethnic minority older adults African American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino. It discusses major denomination and faith traditions, as well as information about types and patterns of participation and their sociodemographic correlates. The chapter examines informal social support provisions within faith communities and the types of assistance exchanged. It also examines associations between religion, spirituality and physical/mental health, and psychological well-being. Religion and spirituality, through a variety of psychosocial mechanisms and pathways are thought to have largely beneficial impacts on physical and mental hea.

This chapter frames the behavior of patients within a psychosocial model of resilience, underscoring the role of adaptive coping strategies. It presents the results of a study exploring the utility of resilience theory in guiding understanding of the beliefs and practices of African Americans toward colon cancer screening. The chapter proposes that resilience theory will provide a framework for understanding where health-prevention and related behaviors fit in the overall life schemas of persons at risk. The chapter also uses resilience theory to understand the processes that would lead to better access to and actual use of colorectal cancer screening in minority populations. These research findings have potential to guide the development of a targeted intervention to encourage colorectal cancer screening among minority individuals. This study is a first step to explore personal views of key representatives of the African American community, female elders, with regard to colorectal cancer screening.

Improved nutritional status is an important component of efforts to improve the health of older adults, whose ability to consume a healthy diet is affected by comorbidities and behavioral, cognitive, and psychological factors. In addition to genetics and nutrition intake, nutritional status of the elderly could be affected by socioeconomic factors, such as education and income levels, and environmental factors, such as proximity to stores and transportation, that can affect food variety and availability. Nutrition and aging are connected inseparably because eating patterns affect progress of many chronic and degenerative diseases associated with aging. Anthropometric measurements are often used for nutritional assessment of older adults and are reliable across ethnicities. The Mini-Nutritional Assessment (MNA) tool was developed to evaluate the risk of malnutrition among frail older adults. Dietary patterns may better capture the multifaceted effects of diet on body composition than individual nutrients or foods.

Although assisted living administrators do not serve as clinicians to older persons within their facility, understanding normal psychological changes related to the aging process allows administrators to perform their work more effectively. Understanding many of the normal aging-related changes in neurological functioning, mental health functioning, memory, and cognition can be important in understanding how elders function in assisted living communities. Furthermore, issues related to memory changes, dementia, depression, suicide risk, alcohol, and substance abuse can be commonly experienced by the elderly. An awareness and understanding of these issues can be beneficial to assisted living administrators. Many individuals associate memory changes and problems as an inherent part of the aging process. This chapter identifies and presents best practices in selected areas associated with psychological aspects of aging. Best practices can provide administrators with information and examples of strategies for approaching some of the psychological issues present in aging individuals.

This chapter examines the impact of the psychosocial work environment on the mental health of people who work. It examines the impact of a different category of workplace hazards, namely, psychosocial hazards. In examining the research bearing on the impact of psychosocial working conditions on mental health, the chapter is largely confined to higher quality longitudinal studies, many of which have been population, based, and have controlled for workers’ psychological functioning at the first wave of data collection. Occupational health psychology (OHP)-related research on mental health has focused largely on the relation of psychosocial working conditions to three types of outcomes: psychological distress, depression and burnout. Social support fits well with research concerning the relation of psychosocial workplace factors to mental health because coworker and supervisor support are psychosocial workplace factors. OHP researchers face a number of challenges when studying the mental health impact of psychosocial working conditions.

This chapter examines the coining of the term “occupational health psychology”. It also examines the historical antecedents of OHP as well as its institutional history. The chapter focuses on the psychological impact of combat on soldiers in two world wars. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, n. d.), occupational health psychology (OHP) involves “the application of psychology to improving the quality of work life, and to protecting and promoting the safety, health and well-being of workers”. OHP is quintessentially interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary research requires robust institutional support. An institutional development affected the course of the social sciences. Public health-oriented OHP researchers have been intent on characterizing objective features of the psychosocial work environment that affect the health of workers. OHP involved the application of psychological theory and knowledge to prevent, diagnose, and treat “physical disease and dysfunction” that arise from workplace conditions.