AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin was recently quoted in The Atlantic:
“When people are at the center of their universe through their job, we don’t have a storyline or a place in our society that is attractive enough to say, ‘Maybe I’ve had enough,’” says Joseph Coughlin, the founder and director of the MIT AgeLab. “You’re showing people the door with no direction.” That has implications for cognitive and emotional health. When a person starts to identify himself by the past tense—that he used to be a doctor, a teacher, or the president—he shifts his focus from his present and future to his past. Research shows that ruminating on the past can correlate with negative mental-health outcomes, including depression and a sense that one’s perspective and experiences are no longer relevant.