INTRODUCTION
Being an adult and growing old is an inevitable part of the processes involved in every man’s life. Along with this are the day-to-day challenges that people have to cope with in order to live an easy life in the long term. One of the challenges experienced by most people is stress. Stress is the state of either emotional or mental tension that results from being exposed to extreme circumstances; it may come from the unfortunate events in the family, work, friends or even not meeting your expected outputs for a day. Human beings have their specific stress capacity in which it is the volumes of stress one can carry by himself; while stress load on the other hand is the quantity of stress a person experiences in his or her life. Some people are lucky enough to be strong-willed and can adapt to stress right away, but some are not that strong that stress makes their life less easy and worse, miserable. There are also people whom because of piled stress in their lives resort in killing themselves. Moreover, there is this so-called “coping” which a person does to adjust behaviorally and cognitively to the demands of stress. It is very important that one has learned his or her own unique coping mechanisms to reduce and alleviate further damages to one’s self. In another story, talking about resilience of the elderlies means their ability and strength to return to a condition of being in equilibrium after some unfortunate events or what they call “episodes” (Windle, 2014). Resilience is often related to child development, psychologically, and is more likely seen and considered as a mechanism compared to being a specific trait or character of a person (Windle, 2014).
Stress in Elderly and their Coping Mechanisms and Resilience
With the studies conducted worldwide in the goal of understanding the relationship of age to stress-coping and resilience, many factors have been included in the lists – one is that the effect of stress is greatly accompanied by genetic substrate as well as the intensity of both the physiological and psychological reactions towards stress (Beasley, M., Thompson, T., Davidson, J., 2002).
Telomeres are the protective caps found on the chromosomes’ end part which are normally preventing any senescence in the cell; with telomeres, the biological cellular age can be determined. The length of the telomere in adults is correlated with chronological age (Hawkley, Berntson, Engeland, et. al., 2003). As for an example, a mother who is between the ages of 20 to 50 is looking after her ill child and then her telomere length found in the mononuclear cells is observed to be inversely related to the duration of her caregiving. This study therefore concluded that there is a bad effect of stressful events on a person’s life that pushes her to aged more rapidly compared to those who are exposed to less stress.
On another note, looking into the details that are more easily seen by the eyes, studies have shown that elderly people are more likely to be stressed when they belong to the lower socioeconomic population in the community as well as if there is unstable income. In addition, elderly who live alone and those who have spouses who are sick tend to be more stressed in life. Elderly people usually have this unfortunate decline in their functional abilities because of chronic and acute diseases and even due to aging. Moreover, some might think that it is because of their incapability to support themselves, but according to studies, it is more closely related to the mental state.
As people grow old, the level of maturity also increases and it therefore enables them to deal with the different kinds of stress termed to be coping. There are many styles of coping mechanism and the five main categories are the following: a. emotion-focused wherein a person is successful enough to manage his emotional concerns as well as reaction to the problem, b. religious coping is more focused on asking help from the Creator, c. problem-focused is the type of coping in which a plan is made so as to solve the problem and resolutions are the result of this style, d. cognitive reframing on the other hand is more inclined on looking on the positive and brighter side of every problem faced and lastly, e. social support is the coping mechanism which entertains the view of other people on the problem and then incorporating it to one’s decision to come up with solutions to the problem (Casas, n.d). Coping usually goes with a complimentary concept of resilience.
Elderly people are more likely to be resilient especially when it comes to hardships, traumas and tragedies experienced in life; there is the theory of salutogenesis by Aaron Antonovsky which states that the factors and reasons of stresses will only cause some harm if the sense of coherence is violated.
The sense of coherence is subdivided into three major components: a. Manageability in which it is the ability of a person to manage and control the stressors around him given the fact that he or she is positive that he has enough skills, help, resources and support that things will be taken care of., b. Comprehensibility is the mindset that there are really instances in life that you will be surprised will happen but eventually, that person is able to come up to the fact that there are patterns to the happenings and predictions can be made such that one scenario will lead to another. Hence, the person can be well prepared of the consequences of every action done about the problem. Finally, c. Meaningfulness is the mindset that everything that is happening is for a specific reason and there are good things that will come after an unfortunate scenario. Based on studies, resilience actually is not affected by the age rather; the intensity of resilience of a teen may be equal to that of an elderly; it depends mainly on the personality of the person. Also, there is no great correlation between genders and being resilient because there are studies which proves that for elderly people, men are more resilient, while according to some studies, women are more resilient (Windle, 2014).
Conclusion
References
Beasley, M., Thompson, T., Davidson, J., (2002) “Resilience in response to life stress: the effects of coping style and cognitive hardiness” Retrieved from http://www.nursingacademy.com/uploads/6/4/8/8/6488931/resiliencecoping.pdf
Casas, R. (n.d) “Older Adult’s Perceptions of Stress and Effective Coping Strategies” Retrieved from https://earth.callutheran.edu/schools/cas/programs/psychology/teaching_learning/documents/OlderAdultsPerceptionsofStressandEffectiveCopingStrategiesbyRebeakahCasas.pdf
Hawkley, L., Berntson, G., Engeland, C., Marucha, P., Masi, C., Cacioppo, J., (n.d) “Stress, Aging, and Resilience: Can Accrued Wear and Tear be Slowed?” Retrieved from http://psychology.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/cacioppo/jtcreprints/hbemmc05.pdf
Windle, G. (2014) “Resilience in Older Age” Retrieved from: http://www.cpa.org.uk/information/reviews/CPA-Rapid-Review-Resilience-and-recovery.pdf
