Stress Management and Anti-aging: Mental Anti-aging

The brain undergoes quantitative and qualitative changes with aging. The former involves a decrease in brain weight due to a reduction in the dendritic protrusions of nerve cells, while the latter involves changes in neurofibrils, senile plaques, and a decrease in vascular density. In addition to these biological changes in the brain, it is believed that physical frailty centered on sarcopenia, which comes with aging, and an increase in psychosocial stress with themes such as “loss,” interact with each other, leading to changes in mental function and the emergence of psychiatric symptoms. Changes in mental function include a decline in cognitive processes such as perception, memory, learning, thinking, and judgment (i.e., cognitive decline), mood disorders, apathy, and personality changes, while psychiatric symptoms include depression, anxiety, insomnia, and delusions. Cognitive decline and depression, which can be called pathological aging of the mind, have been proposed to interact with frailty and promote the frailty cycle [1], and mental anti-aging is an essential element for achieving successful aging. In this section, we will first provide an overview of cognitive decline and depression in relation to the frailty cycle. Then, we will discuss stress management as a means of preventing depression and touch on interventions using positive psychology.