Coping with life events in old age

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the coping strategies, resources and processes of elderly people in response to various life events and other stressful situations. The subjects were 75-year-old men and women (born 1914) living in Jyväskylä, Central Finland. 301 persons answered the first coping questionnaire in 1989. About one and a half year later 226 (75 %) of these subjects answered another questionnaire on ways of coping and a sentence completion test on coping resources. 30 subjects also participated in a theme interview concerning the process of coping and adaptation. Some of the subjects were either unable or unwilling to respond fully to the questionnaires. Consequently, the questionnaires need further development. In particular, processes of coping and adaptation proved to be difficult to investigate by either questionnaire or theme interview, as people are not used to describing their coping behaviour. The use of a sentence completion test among the elderly subjects gave encouraging results. The most common stressful events or situations experienced by the subjects were the deaths of close persons and health problems. However, experiencing several stressful life changes during a short period of life was rare. Most of the subjects seemed to rely on their own resources to handle stressful situations. The majority used a variety of cognitive, behavioural and emotional ways of coping, from very active to more passive, social support and problem solving being the most important strategies. The content and the subjective experience of an event, but also individual preferences had effects on the choice of strategies. Coping strategies and resources were to some extent related to gender and other factors such as mood, cognitive functioning and socioeconomic status. It was concluded, however, that great interindividual differences make it hard to predict the coping behaviour of elderly persons on the basis of various internal and external factors.