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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| A pilot study on perceived stress and PTSD symptomatology in relation to four dimensions of older women's physical health | | Author(s) | Luciana Laganą, Stacy L Reger |
| Journal title | Aging & Mental Health, vol 13, no 6, November 2009 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis, November 2009 |
| Pages | pp 885-893 |
| Source | http://www.tandfonline.com |
| Keywords | Older women ; Stress ; Health [elderly] ; Social characteristics [elderly] ; Pilot ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | The authors examined whether selected demographic and psychological factors would predict physical health dimensions in a sample of 53 cognitively high-functioning and ethnically diverse women (age 65-105). Predictors encompassed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptomatology and perceived stress (of a non-traumatic nature and beyond health status) in relation to all dimensions of physical health of the Medical Outcome Study 36-item Short Form Health Survey (MOS SF-36) (Ware and Sherbourne, 1992). Other measures used were: the Mini-Cog; a demographic list; the Brief Posttraumatic Stress Screening Scale (BPSSS); and the Older Women's Perceived Stress beyond Health Status Scale. Age and income, well-known correlates of health in the target population, were included as potential predictors. The authors first tested the relationship between potential predictors and health dimensions via a canonical correlation analysis, and then employed full multiple regression analyses to simultaneously test the predictors in each health dimension model. Perceived stress was a significant predictor of lower levels of general health (GH), but not of role limitations or physical functioning (PF). Conversely, PTSD symptomatology predicted more limitations in role fulfillment (and, to a lesser extent, impaired PF), but not lower levels of GH. As expected, age and income were predictive of some physical health dimensions. The hypothesised predictors failed to account for a significant portion of variance in pain scores. PTSD symptomatology and perceived stress might influence older women's physical health dimensions differentially; additional research on larger samples is needed to corroborate these findings. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100210226 A |
| Classmark | BD: QNH: CC: F: 4UC: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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