Guest Editor's Introduction

The articles in this issue of the journal were presented as a symposium on Spirituality, Religion, and Mental Health at the 52nd Annual Scientific Meeting of the Gerontological Society of America. They all explore some aspect of the question: Is emotional well-being improved, damaged, or unaffected by religious and spiritual belief and experience? Linda Foley looks for some of the correlates of spiritual well-being among older women. In samples including young, middle-aged and older people, prior research suggests that increased age is associated with increased spirituality. Foley finds that this is not the case within a sample of women ranging in age from their early sixties to over one hundred. Apparently, several decades spent within old age may not produce the same spiritual growth as decades from youth to middle age or from middle to old age. Is there a spiritual ceiling? Why not spiritual change within old age? Isn’t change and diversity one of the hallmarks of gerontological research in mental health? Are not at least some people able to continue to grow spiritually and to find meaning and life satisfaction even as they continue to age through life’s last chapters? She finds that there are surely spiritual differences among these women. A college education, better health and being married are all associated with higher levels of spirituality. Perhaps the key to spiritual and mental health is an ability to transcend the inevitable losses that accompany late life. Fereshteh Ahmadi Lewin and L. Eugene Thomas take us to other cultures to explore the relationship between gerotranscendence and life satisfaction. Their findings among Turkish Moslems and Iranian Sufis suggest that gerotranscendence is a quite valuable, but not the only, way to contentment and appreciation of life in the later years. They also find gerotranscendence and religion to be related in both groups, but in different ways. They argue that Turkish Moslems find their way to gerotranscendence through acceptance of suffering. Iranian Sufis follow a more