The Joys and Stresses of Social Relationships and the Effect on Resiliency During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A National Survey of US Older Adults

We described trends in resilience among US adults aged 50-80 years approximately one and half years after the onset of the pandemic, compared with before the pandemic, and evaluated associations between relationships and resilience.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Data were from the National Poll on Healthy Aging (N=2,100) in August 2021. Respondents rated their resiliency as compared with before the pandemic (more, about the same, or less) and different types of relationships (spouse/partner, friends, neighbors) as sources of joy and/or stress during the pandemic (a lot, some, very little, and not at all). Multinomial logistic regressions (complete-case analysis) estimated the relationships between each joyful and stressful relationships and resiliency.RESULTS: Most participants reported feeling as resilient as before the pandemic (70.6%) with 14.5% feeling less resilient. More women than men felt less resilient than before the pandemic (16.7% vs. 12.8%, p=0.006). Feeling a lot of stress from one's spouse or neighbors was associated with increased likelihood of feeling less resilient than before the pandemic (OR=3.7; 95% CI: 1.8, 7.7 and OR=4.5; 95% CI: 1.5, 13.9, respectively) which was stronger among women (OR=15.1; 95% CI: 4.8, 45.6) than men (OR=1.03; 95% CI: 0.4, 2.7).DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Social relationships may have been more important for women than for men in supporting resiliency during the pandemic. Understanding patterns of resiliency can help to inform polic...
Source: The Gerontologist - Category: Geriatrics Authors: Source Type: research