Background: Common mental disorders (CMD) vary by age, gender, and culture. This study: (1) examined the factor structure of the 20-item Self Reporting Questionnaire (SRQ-20) and (2) explored gender-related measurement invariance in the SRQ's performance with older adults in Puerto Rico, a U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile the association between migration and deteriorated refugee mental health is well-documented, existing research overwhelmingly centers on adult populations, leaving a discernible gap in our understanding of the factors influencing mental health for forcibly displaced children. This focus is particularly noteworthy considering the estimated 43.3 million children who are forcibly displaced globally.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Aging Hum Dev
June 2024
Older adults prefer ageing in place (AIP) rather than institutionalized facilities. Although its advantages, AIP can be challenging when communities are unable to meet residents' needs. This study aims to identify the relationship between the level of age-friendliness of community and AIP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Most older adults with dementia are assisted by multiple caregivers, but the relationship of care network structure with health care access and quality is underexamined. We sought to test the associations of care network characteristics with the physician visit experience for older adults with dementia across diverse racial/ethnic groups.
Methods: We used data on Medicare beneficiaries (aged 65+) with dementia from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (2015-2019) to fit logistic regression models to test associations between physician visit outcomes and (a) size of the potential care network and (b) proportion of potential care network members (PCNMs) currently helping with daily functioning tasks.
Low-income senior housing provided through the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program is a critical site for aging in place, and many of these properties have hired service coordinators to monitor residents' quality of life, provide access to services, and promote their ability to age in place. To address gaps in the limited literature on Section 202 buildings, this study examined the association between service coordination and low-income senior housing residents' preference to age in place with particular attention to the most economically vulnerable. We analyzed data from 255 older adults living in eight Section 202 buildings in Southeastern Michigan using logistic regression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
July 2022
As age-friendly community (AFC) initiatives grow, it will be essential to determine whether older adults who live in an AFC have better health than those who live in other environments. This study uses data from the 2017 AARP AFC Surveys and the AARP Livability Index to assess whether AFCs promote the health of older adults. We analyze data for 3027 adults aged 65 and older who reside in 262 zip code areas.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to explore how Korean American older adults viewed and anticipated engaging in end-of-life (EOL) care planning. An exploratory qualitative research design was adopted for the study, and data were collected through 3 focus group interviews. A total of 30 Korean American older adults 65 years or older participated in the study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Research shows that living in segregated neighborhoods may have deleterious health outcomes via social, physical, and socioeconomic contexts that deepen existing inequities. However, there has been limited scholarship examining the effects of segregation on older adults, despite an increasing focus on aging in place. Guided by the Ecological Model of Aging, we examined the effects of segregation on older adults' self-rated health and mental health, accounting for both individual characteristics and neighborhood opportunities and risks (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Brief Sense of Community Scale (BSCS) is a well-validated measure of psychological sense of community (PSOC), but it has yet to be tested with Spanish-speaking older adults. The current study uses data from face-to-face interviews with a non-probability sample of 154 community-dwelling older adults in Puerto Rico. We used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test three competing factor structures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Cities and counties worldwide have adopted the concept of "age-friendly communities." These communities aspire to promote older adults' well-being by providing a safe, affordable built environment and a social environment that encourages their participation. A major limitation in this field is the lack of valid and reliable measures that capture the complex dimensionality and dynamic nature of the aging-environment interface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeighborhood age composition is an understudied area. Furthermore, existing empirical and conceptual work is conflicting, with some scholarship-indicating neighborhoods with older adults are beneficial and other scholarship suggesting it can be detrimental. Combining data from 7,197 older adults from the first wave (2011) of the National Health & Aging Trends Study and census tract data from the National Neighborhood Change Database, the purposes of our study were to: 1) identify the characteristics of neighborhoods experiencing different types of changes in age composition, and 2) examine the association between neighborhood age composition and self-rated health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Older adults are closely connected to their neighborhoods and they spend more time there than younger adults. Because their mobility is often impeded by diminished health and functioning, access to neighborhood health and social services is essential for their well-being. This article examines whether geographic proximity to these types of neighborhood resources is associated with depression among older adults in South Korea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Given the ethnic/racial disparities in end-of-life care, this study aimed to describe and identify factors affecting engagement in three types of advance care planning including informal talk, living will, and durable power of attorney for health care among ethnic/racial minority older adults. Living will refers to any written instruction about medical treatments at the end-of-life while durable power of attorney for health care allows someone to make a health care decision when an individual is incapable of making a reasoned decision.
Design: We used a subset of racial/ethnic minority groups drawn from the second wave of the National Health Aging and Trends Survey ( = 543) collected in 2012.
Objective: Older African Americans may underutilize mental health services, although they experience mental health problems at rates comparable with those of whites. Untreated mental disorders contribute to increased risk of morbidity and mortality and decreased quality of life, and therefore, understanding the factors that influence racial disparities in service use is critical. This study examined whether county characteristics were associated with mental health service use by older African Americans after the analyses adjusted for individual characteristics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This article investigates distinct patterns of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in a representative sample of US older adults, and how the ACEs patterns relate to major depression and substance use disorder (SUD).
Methods: Data came from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions III. The study sample consisted of older adults aged 55 or older ( = 11,386).
Family members are involved in the decision-making process of advance care planning (ACP). However, there is limited evidence about how family caregiving situations affect engagement in ACP. To understand how agreement on caregiving situations and caregiving burdens are predictive of engagement in ACP of older adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Although older Hispanics experience high rates of depression, they tend to underuse mental health services. The study examined the association between county characteristics and mental health service use among older Hispanics, controlling for individual characteristics.
Research Design And Methods: The study used the 2008-2012 Medical Expenditure Panel Study and linked county-level data from the 2013-2014 Area Health Resources Files and the 2008-2012 Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse, using the Federal Information Processing Standard county code.
Background And Objectives: In the United States, the older adult population and the proportion of neighborhoods experiencing gentrification are both growing. However, there is limited scholarship on the effects of gentrification on older adults, with most work focusing on those who leave rather than stay. This study examines the effects of remaining in a gentrifying neighborhood on older adults' self-rated health and mental health, with particular attention to outcomes for those who are economically vulnerable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Work Health Care
December 2017
This study evaluated the psychometric properties of a Korean version of the Caregiver Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE-K). The sample included 145 Korean American caregivers. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to examine the factor structure of the CSE-K.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study examined the use of preventive health services among Korean American adults. Data were drawn from a cross-sectional survey of 212 Korean Americans in the Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan area. Guided by the Andersen's behavioral model, the authors examined whether predisposing (age, gender, marital status, household size, education), enabling (income, health insurance, English proficiency, citizenship, social network), and need (health status) factors are predictive of Korean Americans' preventive health services utilization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Aging Hum Dev
March 2015
Although some evidence suggests that community characteristics may play an important role in the development of depressive symptoms among older adults, current literature has not attended to the role of community characteristics in depression in South Korea. This study begins to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationship of community characteristics and depressive symptoms, controlling for individual characteristics. Using a cross-sectional design and probability sampling, we surveyed 949 older adults living alone in 70 communities in the Busan metropolitan area in South Korea in 2012.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Well-being has been conceptualized as a two-dimensional construct that includes both hedonic and eudaimonic components. To date, existing measures of well-being may not adequately capture both of these components for older adults, and limited literature has explored whether the two constructs can be integrated into one factor to measure well-being in this population.
Method: This study examined the factor structure of the 11 well-being items from the National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), a nationally representative panel study of Medicare recipients in the US.
This study examined how the interprofessional experience, including education and practice, affects graduate health science students' attitudes toward interprofessional practice in health care teams. Data were collected from 227 graduate students, using the Attitudes toward Health Care Teams (ATHCT) scale. Both social work and other health science students had positive attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration with regard to its ability to improve the quality of a patient's care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Aging Hum Dev
July 2014
This study aimed to explore the prevalence of and risk factors for self-neglect among older adults who live alone. Data were obtained through face-to-face interview responses of 1,023 older adults living alone in a metropolitan area in South Korea, selected via stratified random sampling, which considered the population variables gender, age group, and district. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the prevalence of self-neglect, and hierarchical multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify significant risk factors of self-neglect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Interprof Care
March 2014
The purpose of this study was to assess reliability and validity of the adapted "Attitudes Toward Health Care Teams Scale (ATHCTS)" with graduate professional students. Data using a cross-sectional design were collected from 288 graduate students who were enrolled at an urban professional university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was run and it was found that a two-factor ATHCTS better represented the sample.
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