Social support, stress, and well-being among older adults.

The purpose of this study was to examine whether social support buffers the deleterious effects of stressful life events on depressive symptoms among a random community sample of older adults. Previous research has provided contradictory conclusions regarding the stress buffering capacity of supportive social relations. The reason for these inconclusive findings may be traced in part to the failure of researchers to disaggregate their social support and stressful life event inventories. The findings from the present study reveal that, although social support fails to modify the effects of a global stressful life events indicator, specific types of social support buffer the impact of specific types of stressors (bereavement, crime, and social network crises).