Transitions between social network profiles and their relation with all-cause mortality among older adults

Informal Caregiver Social Network Types and Mental Health: The Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience

Little is known about whether and why social networks protect mental health among informal caregivers. This study examined the association between informal caregiver social network types and depressive symptoms and the mediatory mechanism of psychological resilience. Latent class analysis, applied to cross-sectional data on 278 Singaporean caregivers, identified four social network types: restricted (42%), friend (16%), family (21%), and diverse (21%). Path analysis showed that the diverse social network type, compared to the restricted social network type, was associated with a lower level of depressive symptoms, and psychological resilience fully mediated this association. Interventions should help caregivers to maintain social networks with their family and friends.

"I Love You to Death": Social Networks and the Widowhood Effect on Mortality

Research on "the widowhood effect" shows that mortality rates are greater among people who have recently lost a spouse. There are several medical and psychological explanations for this (e.g., "broken heart syndrome") and sociological explanations that focus on spouses' shared social-environmental exposures. We expand on sociological perspectives by arguing that couples' social connections to others play a role in this phenomenon. Using panel data on 1,169 older adults from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we find that mortality is associated with how well embedded one's spouse is in one's own social network. The widowhood effect is greater among those whose spouses were not well connected to one's other network members. We speculate that the loss of a less highly embedded spouse signals the loss of unique, valuable, nonredundant social resources from one's network. We discuss theoretical interpretations, alternative explanations, limitations, and directions for future research.

Patterns of Social Isolation and Low Social Support and Frailty Trajectories Among Chinese Older Adults

Objectives: This study aims to identify patterns of social isolation and low social support, and discover their associations with frailty trajectories among Chinese older adults. Methods: The paper used five waves of the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS, 2005-2018). The latent class analysis, multi-trajectory modeling, and the multinomial logistic regression approaches were used to perform the analysis. Results: The paper identified five types of social isolation and low social support, and three typical frailty trajectories. Patterns of social isolation and low social support were associated with frailty trajectories among older adults. Conclusions: Distinct patterns of social isolation and low social support were significantly correlated with frailty trajectories. To improve frailty trajectories among older adults, interventions such as Healthy China 2030 should prioritize addressing the interplay between social isolation and low social support.

Latent Subtype of Cognitive Frailty among Multimorbidity Older Adults and Their Association with Social Relationships

This study aimed to explore all the relevant subtypes of cognitive frailty among Japanese community-dwelling older adults with multimorbidity. Moreover, it examined the associations between these potential subtypes of cognitive frailty and social relationships. This study targeted relevant cross-sectional data regarding community-based older adults with multimorbidity. It employed a person-centered method to perform a latent class analysis and explore the subtypes of cognitive frailty among older adults. Moreover, a multinominal logistic regression analysis was employed to examine the association between potential subtypes of cognitive frailty and social relationships. Data for 396 participants (mean age, 75.8 [SD, 7.3] years; 51.3% females) were analyzed. Three cognitive frailty subtypes were subsequently revealed: the robust group (42.0%), the group with partial cognitive frailty (38.6%), and the group with cognitive frailty (19.4%). People with high levels of social relationships were more likely to be in the robust and the partial cognitive frailty groups. This study identified different subtypes of cognitive frailty among multimorbid older adults and highlighted the significance of social relationships. These findings could serve as a reference for conceptualizing cognitive frailty through the person-centered method. Promoting a high level of social relationships could be useful to prevent the cognitive frailty among older adults with multimorbidity.

Age integration in the social convoys of young and late midlife adults

Homophily on the basis of age is a notable characteristic of social convoys across the life course. Ties to older and younger persons, therefore, are both unusual and potentially provide unique social support resources. This study examined relationships with older, younger, and same-aged non-kin ties among young and late midlife adults. Data came from the University of California Berkeley Social Networks Study (UCNets), a sample of 485 people aged 21-30 and 674 people aged 50-70. A majority of non-kin ties were to people whose age was within 5 years of the participant's own age, although the majority was much larger for young adults (81 %) than late midlife adults (52 %). Younger and older ties often came from different social settings (school, work, religious organizations, and neighborhoods) than same-aged ties, and there were also some cohort differences in the social settings that produced younger, older, and same-aged ties. Younger and older ties also provided different forms of social support than did ties to same-aged persons. Again, the functions of younger and older ties varied by cohort. Implications for life course studies are discussed.