Psychological resilience is a vital resource for facing life’s challenges, especially in old age. Although factors such as emotional contagion and social conditions can increase suffering, understanding these processes allows us to create strategies to help older adults live healthier and more well-being, even in the face of adversity. This study sheds light on the emotional and social factors that contribute to anxiety and depression in older adults, showing that managing shared emotions and building support networks may be essential to promoting mentally healthy aging.
Psychological resilience is the ability to adapt and maintain mental health, even when we face adversity and challenges throughout life. It is like an “emotional buffer” that helps us deal with difficult events, from everyday problems to more serious situations.
Researchers have explored this concept and concluded that it is multifaceted, that is, it involves a combination of personal factors (such as personality traits), social factors (such as support from friends and family), and contextual factors (such as the time and circumstances in which the challenges occur).
For resilience to be tested, adversity must occur, which can be described as stressful situations. These situations include both serious events, such as the loss of a loved one, and chronic stressors, such as caring for someone who is ill for a long period of time.
Resilience is essential to prevent stress from leading to psychological distress, such as anxiety or depression. Psychological distress occurs when a person is unable to cope well with stress and adversity, resulting in emotional disturbances that interfere with daily life.
It can range from mild symptoms, such as tension and worry, to more severe symptoms, such as deep sadness and loss of interest in activities. These symptoms are common in anxiety and depression and can vary greatly from person to person.
Symptoms of anxiety and depression are especially concerning in older adults because they increase the risk of physical illnesses, such as heart disease and diabetes, and affect quality of life and functional independence.
As we age, we face unique changes and challenges, such as declining health, loss of loved ones, and adaptation to new social roles. Resilience plays an important role in the ability to overcome these challenges, helping older adults maintain their mental health.
However, studies show that the impact of stress can be more severe in older people due to changes in the body, such as the functioning of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, which regulates the stress response.
In addition, stressors can be both explicit (situations perceived as threatening, such as financial hardship) and implicit (automatic responses to interpersonal interactions, such as absorbing the emotional tension of others). The latter phenomenon, called emotional contagion, is when we pick up and “mirror” other people’s emotions, often without realizing it. For example, being around someone who is anxious can make you feel tense too.
Some people are more prone to emotional contagion, due to characteristics such as empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand what others are feeling, but it can be divided into two types:
Cognitive empathy: rationally understanding another person’s emotions.
Emotional empathy: feeling the emotions of another person, which can lead to mirroring feelings.
When emotional empathy is high, a person may be more vulnerable to emotional contagion, which can make it harder to cope with stress. Therefore, understanding this vulnerability is crucial to fostering resilience, especially in stressful situations.
In old age, risk factors for psychological distress include both personal and social factors. For example, sociodemographic characteristics, where older women tend to report more symptoms of anxiety and depression than men, possibly due to different exposures to stressors, such as family responsibilities or financial difficulties.
Also living conditions, where older adults who live alone or have low incomes may be more likely to develop psychological distress. Finally, functional autonomy, the loss of physical independence, often caused by chronic diseases or falls, increases the risk of depression.
Promoting resilience in old age requires recognising risk factors and working to mitigate them. This may include:
Encouraging social support networks.
Helping older adults develop effective strategies to cope with stress.
Identifying and treating early symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Encouraging physical activity and healthy habits, which help maintain functional autonomy. Studies also suggest that some interventions, such as therapy to improve emotional regulation or psychological support focused on specific stressors, can make a big difference in the quality of life of older adults.
This study, conducted by researchers at the University of Sousse, investigated how different factors can influence psychological distress in older adults, dividing participants into three groups: without distress, with anxiety, and with combined anxiety and depression.
Aspects such as social and demographic characteristics, autonomy, social support, emotional coping styles, empathy and a special sensitivity called "vulnerability to emotional contagion", the tendency to "absorb" other people's emotions, were analyzed.
The study involved 170 older adults and used the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) to measure levels of anxiety and depression. Almost two-thirds of the participants (65.9%) had some degree of anxiety or depression, either clinical or mild. Based on these results, the participants were divided into three profiles:
Without psychological distress.
With anxiety.
With combined anxiety and depression.
The groups were analyzed in relation to several factors, but there were no significant differences between them in terms of age, education or other demographic characteristics — except for gender, which showed some correlation.
Three elements stood out as important influences for belonging to the groups with psychological distress: vulnerability to emotional contagion refers to the ease with which a person is affected by the emotions of others, such as absorbing the sadness or anxiety of friends or family.
Satisfaction with the social network indicates how much people feel supported and socially connected. Finally, coping styles, which are strategies that people use to deal with stress, such as seeking emotional support or adopting a more proactive stance.
Among these factors, vulnerability to emotional contagion proved to be the most strongly associated with psychological distress, even when other elements were considered, such as adverse situations experienced or use of psychotropic medications.
The results highlight the importance of understanding how emotional and social factors influence psychological well-being in older adults.
Vulnerability to emotional contagion, in particular, appears to play a significant role and suggests that interventions that strengthen emotional regulation may be useful in mitigating anxiety and depression.
Future research, especially that follows people over time (longitudinal studies), may help to better clarify how these factors are related. For example, it will be possible to discover whether vulnerability to emotional contagion increases the risk of psychological distress or whether, on the contrary, it is psychological distress that makes people more susceptible to these emotional influences.
Psychological resilience is a vital resource for facing life’s challenges, especially in old age. Although factors such as emotional contagion and social conditions can increase distress, understanding these processes allows us to create strategies to help older adults live healthier and more well-being, even in the face of adversity.
This study sheds light on the emotional and social factors that contribute to anxiety and depression in older adults, showing that addressing shared emotions and building support networks may be essential to promoting mentally healthy aging.
READ MORE:
The contribution of vulnerability to emotional contagion to the expression of psychological distress in older adults
Marie-Josée Richer, Sébastien Grenier, and Pierrich Plusquellec
PLOS Ment Health 1(5): e0000098.
Abstract:
This study examines the differential weight of a wide range of factors—sociodemographic factors, indicators of autonomy, social support, coping styles, vulnerability to emotional contagion, and empathy—in the presence of two profiles of psychological distress and in their absence. This cross-sectional study included 170 older adults. As assessed by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), 65.9% of the individuals in the sample had a clinical or subthreshold level of anxiety and depression (score > 1). Based on the HADS’s clinical cutoff scores for the anxiety and depression subscales, three profiles were created for the no distress, anxiety, and anxious depression groups. The profiles did not differ on demographic indicators except for sex. Vulnerability to emotional contagion, satisfaction with the social network and coping styles emerged as factors weighing the likelihood of being in either of the psychological distress groups relative to individuals with no distress. After controlling for adversity and psychotropic treatment, vulnerability to emotional contagion had the strongest relationship with both psychological distress profiles. Future research, such as a prospective longitudinal study, may provide an opportunity to explain the direction of the relationship between psychological distress and the factors studied, particularly vulnerability to emotional contagion.
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