This five-year follow-up study looked at whether older Singaporeans who had earlier taken part in activities like mindfulness, gardening, art, or choir singing had better thinking skills and fewer depressive symptoms later on, compared with those who hadn’t.
Surveying almost 9,000 people who took part in a ‘Gardening with Edibles’ programme during Singapore’s COVID-19 restrictions, this study found that those who gardened weekly felt more mentally resilient than others, supporting gardening as a way to cope with stressful times.
Reviewing 26 studies, this research found that adolescents whose parents were less supportive, more controlling, or harsher were more likely to self-harm without suicidal intent. Most findings relied on teens’ own descriptions of their parents’ behaviour.
Tracking over 400 older Singaporeans, this study found that those who were more isolated and had a lower quality of life before the pandemic went on to feel more anxious during the lockdown, identifying them as a group needing extra support in future crises.
This study looked at how the COVID-19 lockdown affected family relationships and communication between generations among young adults in Singapore, finding that families with a good balance of closeness and flexibility coped better and felt more supported.
In a large Singapore survey, about 1 in 8 elderly people had mild memory problems. Men were more likely to have the type mainly affecting memory, while women were more likely to have the type affecting other thinking skills, like planning or attention.
This study found that a brain-growth protein called BDNF was actually higher, not lower, in the blood of older adults with mild memory problems compared with healthy peers, and could reliably tell the two groups apart. The researchers suggest this rise may be the brain’s way of compensating for early decline.
This study protocol describes a trial testing whether mindfulness training can help prevent dementia in older adults with mild memory problems, tracking effects on thinking skills as well as a range of blood and brain markers linked to ageing.
This study followed community-dwelling older Singaporeans over several years to see whether taking part in activities like art, music, or gardening was linked to slower memory decline and fewer depressive symptoms.
This study created local Singapore benchmarks for a set of computerized memory and thinking tests, using data from 210 older adults, and checked how well these newer tests matched up with traditional pen-and-paper tests.
