Gene D. Cohen, M.D., shattered an enduring myth about growing old—that it’s a time of decline and shrinking potential. Supported by his decades of research and treating older people, Cohen encouraged us to sing, dance, paint and write. And the more we do, preached the psychiatrist and health care expert, the more our later years can be a rich time for growth, creativity, and intellectual and emotional vitality.

“Some of life’s most precious gifts can only be acquired with age: wisdom, for example, and mastery in hundreds of different spheres of human experience that requires decades of learning,” he wrote in his 2006 book The Mature Mind: The Positive Power of the Aging Brain.

Cohen, who died Nov. 7 of prostate cancer at age 65, combined an inquisitive mind and scientific rigor with humor and compassion. His gift was to apply the latest findings of neuroscience in a way that benefited ordinary people. For example, he developed a simple approach—he called it a “social portfolio”—that encourages people to treat their activities and relationships as future assets that are at least as valuable as financial ones.

Inventor

“He was a luminary in establishing the field of creativity and aging, and I would say its foremost scholar,” says Judah Ronch, dean of the Erickson School at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and an expert on geriatric mental wellness.

Cohen’s research built on neurological studies proving that brain cells do not die off as we age but continue to grow and form new pathways. Being creative, whether painting a watercolor or coming up with a new recipe, nurtures and strengthens the brain, he argued, just as calisthenics builds up our biceps. When we master new skills, we improve our well-being. “Art and autobiography are like chocolate to the brain,” he liked to say.

Filmmaker Melissa Godoy of Cincinnati, who worked with Cohen on Do Not Go Gently, her film about people who remain creative very late in life, says she appreciated his grasp of complex issues that artists encounter. “He understood how our perception of life becomes layered as we age,” she says. “Because so much of life is a paradox, a strange mix of joy, loss and hope, sometimes artistic expressions are the only way to contain it all.”

Educated at Harvard University and the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Cohen made his mark on the field of geriatrics by focusing attention on mental and emotional health. He was the first chief of the Center on Aging at the National Institute of Mental Health in the early 1970s and later served as acting director of the National Institute on Aging. Since 1994, he led the Center on Aging, Health & Humanities at George Washington University, where he was a professor both of health care sciences and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He worked on Alzheimer’s disease for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In recent years, he was a visiting scholar at AARP.

Perhaps his most noted research was the 2006 “Creativity and Aging Study,” developed with major support from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as AARP. Cohen followed older people engaged in arts programs, such as singing in a community chorus. He was the first to identify through research the health benefits associated with those creative pursuits. Compared with a control group, participants in arts programs had better health, made fewer doctor visits, used fewer medications, felt less depressed and lonely, and had higher morale.

Embracing his research

Cohen demonstrated his own creativity not only in his research but in his passion for inventing board games. In one game, designed for people with dementia, families create “memory cards” to depict key events in a loved one’s life. For his own father, who had Alzheimer’s disease and no longer recognized Cohen’s mother, he created a sequence of cards documenting his parents’ courtship. “He was studying the pictures intently,” Cohen said in an interview in 2008. “When he got to their 50th anniversary picture, he said, ‘oh, the love of my life.’ ” Through such activities, Cohen said, “As dreadful as the disease is, families are left with magical moments.”

A small man with a mop of receding curly hair, Cohen had a mischievous smile and a fondness for bow ties. “He did not take himself so seriously that he could not have this pure sense of fun and joy in play,” says Ronch. As evidence, Cohen identified with Star Wars jedi master Obi Wan Kenobi and brandished a light saber when he lectured.

At the same time, he was devoted to serving people locally. He had a close relationship with the nonprofit IONA Senior Services in Washington, where he had his office. And for many years, he volunteered weekly as a clinician, counseling low-income older people.

“He wasn’t an ivory tower sort of guy,” says Gay Hanna, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging in Washington. “He was the sort of guy who always had time for you, and it didn’t matter who you were.”

(Inset: Photo courtesy the George Washington University Medical Center)

Beth Baker lives in Takoma Park, Md., and is the author of Old Age in a New Age—The Promise of Transformative Nursing Homes.