European Psychological Research on Old Age, Ageing and/or Older People: A Systematic Scoping Review of Systematic Reviews

Abstract

Europe is ageing, and psychology is contributing to meet this challenge by providing scientific evidence on old age, ageing and older people. Given the increase in European geropsychological research, the analysis of systematic reviews is a useful procedure to locate key concepts, sources and types of available evidence, as well as gaps in the literature in a given area. The objective of this work is to identify and describe systematic reviews carried out in Europe, published in English, and focused on the study of old age, ageing and/or the elderly from a psychological perspective. To this end, a systematic scoping review of systematic reviews was carried out, using the ProQuest search engines (ERIC, Psychology Database, PsycARTICLES, and PsycINFO databases) and the Cochrane Library, from which 133 articles were extracted. Most of the studies have been carried out by authors from a single country, are recent and focus on secondary aging, specifically on mental health. Given that old age is a period also described by stability and even by gains and the possibility of growth and development, future research should analyse this stage also from the perspective of primary ageing.