Department of Geography and Environment, Brandon University, Canada.
Educational Psychology, Brandon University, Canada.
Soc Sci Med. 2022 Aug;306:115153. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115153. Epub 2022 Jun 16.
Public health and media discourses have often portrayed older adults as a vulnerable group during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, some emerging research is showing that older adults are faring better in terms of their mental health when compared to their younger counterparts. Understanding older adults' mental well-being during the pandemic requires in-depth exploration of the different place-based resources and systems around them. In particular, rural older adults face distinct challenges and opportunities related to accessing valued resources to promote their well-being. Drawing together research on aging and multi-systemic resilience, we explored what strategies, resources, and processes rural older adults valued in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of 51 semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted from May to August 2020 with 26 rural older adults in Manitoba, Canada. Despite adversities, participants drew on and developed resources at the individual, local, community, institutional, and societal level to support their well-being. Specifically, they identified individual strategies (e.g., positivity, acceptance, and gratitude), resources in their immediate environments (e.g., opportunities to keep busy, connect with friends, family and neighbours, and outdoor visits), and community organizations that contributed to their well-being. They also identified broader systems that shaped their resilience processes, such as access to health services, opportunities to volunteer and support others, media stories, reliable information, and public health policies and practices that value older adult lives. Importantly, some resources were less accessible to some participants, highlighting the need to develop strategies that address inequitable resources at different levels. By describing rural older adults' resilience we seek to advance the growing body of research in relation to social ecological resilience that moves beyond a focus on individual characteristics to include understanding of the role of material, social, and cultural contexts.
公共卫生和媒体话语常常将老年人描绘为 COVID-19 大流行期间的弱势群体。然而，一些新兴研究表明，与年轻人相比，老年人的心理健康状况要好得多。要了解大流行期间老年人的心理健康，需要深入探讨他们周围不同的基于地点的资源和系统。特别是，农村老年人在获得促进其幸福感的有价值资源方面面临着独特的挑战和机遇。我们借鉴老龄化和多系统弹性方面的研究，探讨了农村老年人在 COVID-19 大流行初期重视哪些策略、资源和流程。2020 年 5 月至 8 月，我们对加拿大马尼托巴省的 26 名农村老年人进行了一系列 51 次半结构化电话访谈。尽管面临逆境，参与者还是利用和发展了个人、地方、社区、机构和社会层面的资源来支持他们的幸福感。具体来说，他们确定了个人策略（例如，积极性、接受性和感恩）、其直接环境中的资源（例如，保持忙碌、与朋友、家人和邻居联系以及户外访问的机会）以及有助于他们幸福感的社区组织。他们还确定了塑造他们韧性过程的更广泛的系统，例如获得卫生服务、志愿和支持他人的机会、媒体报道、可靠信息以及重视老年人生命的公共卫生政策和实践。重要的是，一些资源对某些参与者来说不太容易获得，这凸显了需要制定策略来解决不同层面上资源不平等的问题。通过描述农村老年人的韧性，我们旨在推进与社会生态韧性相关的日益增长的研究，超越对个人特征的关注，包括理解物质、社会和文化背景的作用。
