Structural and functional social support in elderly objective and subjective health ratings
This paper aims to investigate the causes that explain the discrepancies between the effects of social relationships on health and wellness of the elderly people. Several disciplines of health sciences have developed different theories to explain the evidence that confirm the positive effects of...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
MDPI AG
2015-08-01
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| Series: | European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://formacionasunivep.com/ejihpe/index.php/journal/article/view/116/99 |
| Summary: | This paper aims to investigate the causes that explain the discrepancies between the effects of
social relationships on health and wellness of the elderly people. Several disciplines of health
sciences have developed different theories to explain the evidence that confirm the positive
effects of social relations. Furthermore, there is acumuative evidence confirming most of the
predictions derived from its principles. However, the empirical evidence has not always
confirmed these beneficial relationships and sometimes these evidences contradict some of the
theoretical predictions. Even, it is not difficult to find reversed effects. In this paper we follow
some of the approaches developed from Social Psychology which analyze the different effects
of social relationships on the health of older people. Two types of aspects of social relations
have served to this purpose. First, the structural aspects (i.e., frequency of intercourse). Second,
qualitative-functional aspects of great tradition in estudies of quality of life and wellbeing of
older people (i.e. social support). Following the Convoy Model, we measured perceived social
support and frecuency of relationships in 168 spaniards, men and women (aged 62 years old
and more). We analyze these discrepancies in the light of the underlying mechanisms. |
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| ISSN: | 2174-8144 2254-9625 |