The Grant Study is an 85-year continuing longitudinal study from the Study of Adult Development at Harvard Medical School , started in 1938. It has followed 268 Harvard-educated men, the majority of whom were members of the undergraduate classes of 1942, 1943 and 1944. It has run in tandem with a study called " The Glueck Study ," which included a second cohort of 456 disadvantaged, non-delinquent inner-city youths who grew up in Boston neighborhoods between 1940 and 1945. The subjects were all white males and of American nationality. As of 2024, the men continue to be studied. They were evaluated at least every two years by questionnaires through information from their physicians and by personal interviews. Information was gathered about their mental and physical health, career enjoyment, retirement experience and marital quality. The goal of the study was to identify predictors of healthy aging.
10-475: The study, its methodology, and results are described in three books by a principal investigator in the study, George Vaillant . The first book, Adaptation to Life , describes the study up to a time when the men were 47 years of age. The second book, Aging Well, describes a time when the inner-city men were 70 years old and those of the Harvard group were 80. In 2012, Vaillant and Harvard University Press published
20-511: A book, with a separate ISBN . The series was established in 2003 as a bimonthly publication but is now published annually since 2007. The editor-in-chief is Ajai R. Singh. Issues are dedicated to a particular theme. The website is now an advertisement for slots and casinos. The 2006 monograph entitled What Medicine Means to Me was reviewed by the Indian Journal of Psychiatry . Some editorials have been re-published elsewhere. The series
30-658: A supervisory role for psychiatric trainees at St. Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. In June 2009, Joshua Wolf Shenk published an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled "What Makes Us Happy?" which focused on Vaillant's work in the Grant Study , a study of 268 men over many decades. Vaillant has been married four times, once to psychotherapist Leigh McCullough . He currently lives in California. Vaillant has received
40-522: Is an American psychiatrist and Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research for the Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women's Hospital . Vaillant has spent his research career charting adult development and the recovery process of schizophrenia , heroin addiction, alcoholism , and personality disorder . Through 2003, he spent 30 years as Director of the Study of Adult Development at
50-887: The Massachusetts Mental Health Center and completed his psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences , is a Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists and has been an invited speaker and consultant for seminars and workshops throughout the world. A major focus of his work in the past has been to develop ways of studying defense mechanisms empirically; more recently, he has been interested in successful aging and human happiness. In 2008, he took up
60-548: The Mens Sana Monographs . He joined the board of trustees of Alcoholics Anonymous as a Class A (non-alcoholic) trustee in 1998. Mens Sana Monographs The Mens Sana Monographs was a peer-reviewed open-access monographic series of mental and physical medicine . It is published by Medknow Publications on behalf of the Mens Sana Research Foundation. Every volume is also published as
70-933: The Foundations Fund Prize for Research in Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association , the Strecker Award from The Pennsylvania Hospital , the Burlingame Award from The Institute for Living, and the Jellinek Award for research on alcoholism . In 1995 he received the research prize of the International Psychogeriatric Society. Vaillant sits on the Honorary International Advisory Board of
80-546: The Harvard University Health Service. The study has prospectively charted the lives of 724 men and women for over 60 years. George Eman Vaillant's father, George Clapp Vaillant , killed himself in 1945. George Eman, who was 10 years old at the time, was traumatized by his father's suicide and thus had deep emotional reasons for being interested in psychiatry. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School , did his psychiatric residency at
90-522: The most notable Grant Study participants included Ben Bradlee , an editor of The Washington Post , and US President John F. Kennedy . George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than three decades, has published a summation of the key insights the study has yielded in the book Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study : George Eman Vaillant George Eman Vaillant ( / v ə ˈ l æ n t / ; born June 16, 1934)
100-466: The third book, Triumphs of Experience , which shared more findings from the Grant Study. The study is part of The Study of Adult Development , which is now under the direction of Dr. Robert J. Waldinger at Massachusetts General Hospital . The study is unique partly because of the long-time span of the cohort, and also partly because of the high social status of some of the study participants. Among
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