Spirituality, social support, and flexibility among older adults: a five-year longitudinal study

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1745-1752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Bailly ◽  
Guillaume Martinent ◽  
Claude Ferrand ◽  
Océane Agli ◽  
Caroline Giraudeau ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTObjectives:The objectives of the study were to examine the trajectory of spirituality among older adults, to investigate the roles of gender and religion on the developmental trajectory of spirituality, and to explore whether the linear growth of spirituality accelerated or decelerated at time points at which the participants reported high scores of social support and flexibility.Design:A five-year longitudinal study.Setting:The research used data from a longitudinal study, which follows a non-institutionalized older adults cohort of residents from France. The data used in this paper were collected at three time points (T1: 2007; T2: 2009; T3: 2012).Participants:A total of 567 participants were included in the analysis (59.44% female; Mage = 75.90, SD = 5.12).Measurements:Multilevel growth curve analysis was used measuring spirituality, satisfaction with social support, and flexibility.Results:The results indicated the following: (1) stability of spirituality over time, (2) older women reported higher levels of spirituality than older men, and those who had a religion reported higher scores of spirituality than their counterparts who had no religion (these effects were strong and clinically meaningful), (3) older adults who reported higher levels of social support and flexibility also reported higher levels of spirituality, and (4) the slope of spirituality seemed to accelerate at time points at which participants also had higher levels of social support and flexibility (these effects were rather small but of theoretical interest).Conclusion:The results of the present study help to improve the understanding of the potential benefit of encouraging the spiritual aspects of life.

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonya Negriff ◽  
Julie A. Cederbaum ◽  
Daniel S. Lee

The current study examined social support as a mediator between maltreatment experiences (number of victimizations, maltreatment types) and depressive symptoms in adolescence. The data came from the first two time points of a longitudinal study of the effects of maltreatment on adolescent development. The enrolled sample were 454 male and females ( n = 303 maltreated, n = 151 comparison) between 9 and 13 years ( M age = 10.82); Time 2 (T2) occurred approximately 1 year after baseline. Maltreatment data came from case records; participants reported on perceived social support and depressive symptoms. Results from path models indicated that depressive symptoms mediated the association between maltreatment experiences (i.e., physical abuse, neglect, and number of maltreatment victimizations) and family social support. There was no evidence that social support functioned as a mediator. This is the first study to find support for depressive symptoms as a mechanism linking maltreatment with decreased perceived family support. These findings point to the importance of assessing mental health and social support simultaneously to understand the functioning of youth with maltreatment histories.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 173-174
Author(s):  
Fereshteh Mehrabi ◽  
François Béland

Abstract Social isolation and frailty are global public health issues that may lead to poor health outcomes. We tested the two following hypotheses: 1) changes in social isolation and frailty are associated with adverse health outcomes over two years, 2) the associations between social isolation and health vary across different levels of frailty. We estimated a series of latent growth models to test our hypotheses using data from the FRéLE longitudinal study among 1643 Canadian community-dwelling older adults aged 65 years and over. Missing data were handled by pattern mixture models with the assumption of missing not at random. We measured social isolation through social participation, social networks, and social support from different social ties. We assessed frailty using Fried’s criteria. Our results revealed that higher frailty at baseline was associated with a higher rate of comorbidity, depression, and cognitive decline over two years. Less social participation at baseline was associated with comorbidity, depression, and changes in cognitive decline. Less social support from friends, children, partner, and family at baseline was associated with comorbidity, cognitive decline, and changes in depression. Fewer contacts with grandchildren were related to cognitive decline over time. The associations of receiving less support from partner with depression and participating less in social activities with comorbidity, depression, and cognitive decline were higher among frail or prefrail than robust older adults over time. This longitudinal study suggests that intimate connectedness and social participation may ameliorate health status in frail older populations, highlighting the importance of age-friendly city policies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (12) ◽  
pp. 2622-2627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Oh ◽  
Kanan Patel ◽  
W. John Boscardin ◽  
Wendy Max ◽  
Caroline Stephens ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 795-796
Author(s):  
Erik Blanco

Abstract This study examines whether parental support (the provision of social support by older parents to adult children) and filial support (older parents’ receipt of social support from adult children) influence two orthogonal dimensions of older adults’ psychological wellbeing: positive feelings and negative feelings. This study also highlights the importance of accounting for parental need as a mediator of social support. A longitudinal design is used to examine the effects of social support on the psychological wellbeing of older adults at Wave 6 (1998) and Wave 8 (2004) of the Longitudinal Study of Generations. Parental support significantly increases parents’ positive feelings, which suggests that, when it comes to positive feelings, it is better to give support than to receive it. Filial support findings indicate that older adults with greater level of disability demonstrate a decrease in negative feelings when they received filial support. However, this effect does not hold for older adults with lesser levels of disability, suggesting that, when it comes to older adults’ negative feelings, it is better to receive support (rather than to give it) when parents are in need. Although parental and filial support have the potential to buffer stressful life transitions in old age, most parents wish to remain independent, even in later life, making them reluctant to accept filial support. The parent-adult child relationship is crucial for psychological wellbeing, especially because of increased life expectancy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 878-899 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berna A. UZUNDAG ◽  
Süleyman S. TAŞÇI ◽  
Aylin C. KÜNTAY ◽  
Ayhan AKSU-KOÇ

AbstractIn languages with evidential marking, utterances consist of an informational content and a specification of the mode of access to that information. In this first longitudinal study investigating the acquisition of the Turkish evidential marker −mIş in naturalistic child–caregiver interactions, we examined six children between 8 and 36 months of age. We charted individual differences in child and caregiver speech over time by conducting growth curve analyses. Children followed a similar course of acquisition in terms of the proportion of the marker in overall speech. However, children exhibited differences with respect to the order of emergence of different evidential functions (e.g., inference, hearsay), where each child showed a unique pattern irrespective of the frequency in caregiver input. Nonfactual use of the marker was very frequent in child and caregiver speech, where high-SES caregivers mostly produced the marker during story-telling and pretend play, and low-SES caregivers for regulating the child's behavior.


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