Your High School Persona Can Predict Your Risk of Dementia

A study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests certain personality traits displayed during adolescence can predict the risk of receiving a dementia diagnosis later, reports Newsweek . According to researchers, high school students who exhibited higher levels of maturity and calmness were less likely to develop dementia in older age, or develop the condition later. Teenagers that displayed more impulsivity were more likely to be diagnosed with the condition, and develop it earlier. The investigators quantified 10 personality traits in a group of 82,232 adults who would have been high school students in 1960, then identified 2,543 who had been diagnosed with dementia between 2011 and 2013. The authors observed significant correlations between certain personality types and dementia risk, even when accounting for height, weight, income, occupation, and socioeconomic status. The findings led to the suspicion that "the adolescent personality traits associated with later-life dementia are similar to those observed in studies of older persons. Personality phenotype may be a true independent risk factor for dementia by age 70 years, preceding it by almost five decades and interacting with adolescent socioeconomic conditions."