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The aim of this study was to test a model of emotional distress, which incorporates the potential mediator role of positive resources (sense of control, self-esteem, and optimism) in the association of age with emotional distress. The study used a cross-sectional design with intentional sampling and the voluntary participation of 325 adults between 18 and 87 years (M = 46.8 ± 19.10). The results show that emotional distress was negatively associated with age. Psychological resources also varied according to age, with older subjects presenting higher optimism and external control as well as lower internal control. The association between internal control and emotional distress was mediated by optimism and self-esteem. Moreover, the combined association of these 3 personal resources significantly increased the relationship between age and lower emotional distress. The results suggest that optimism and self-esteem are powerful resources in relieving emotional distress. The data provide potentially useful information for the design of psychological interventions aimed at reducing emotional distress. (PsycINFO Database Record

Cognitive theories of anxiety propose that selective attention to negative information plays a central role in the development and maintenance of anxiety. The presence of such attentional bias has been confirmed in younger adults. Nevertheless, there are few studies that have explored anxiety-linked attentional bias in older adults, and the available results are inconclusive. Conversely, the socioemotional selectivity theory posits that there are age-related changes in emotional information processing and, consistent with this account, it has been found that older adults preferentially pay more attention to positive stimuli compared with younger adults ("positivity effect"). The present study aimed to explore attentional bias towards negative and positive information in a sample of older adults with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) compared with a control group. The results showed that older adults with GAD displayed an attentional preference for negative information and attentional avoidance for positive information, whereas healthy older adults showed the reverse pattern of attentional deployment. These results suggest that selective attention toward negative information and selective avoidance of positive information may be a relevant factor in clinically anxious older adults.

Will-to-live, a central concept in well-being theories, represents a positive attitudinal component towards one's own life. It has been identified as a mediator between the self-perception of aging and longevity and health. The objective of this study is to characterise elderly people with high levels of will-to-live in the main dimensions of positive psychology.The study included the voluntary participation of 165 adults, aged between 54-89 years, users of senior centres in the Community of Madrid. Will-to-live and other dimensions of well-being and health were evaluated. The correlations between the different evaluated dimensions were analysed, and comparisons made in terms of different levels of will-to-live, as well as an analysis of the dimensions that contribute most to the will-to-live.Correlations among the majority of variables were statistically significant, with a decrease in the coefficients being observed when controlling the effect of the will-to-live. When groups with different levels of will-to-live are compared with well-being and health, there are statistically significant differences in practically all of the dimensions. Gratitude, positive affect, and depression are the dimensions that best predict will-to-live.Older adults that make up the group with high will-to-live are characterised by higher levels of optimism, gratitude, positive affect, sense of life, psychological prosperity, resilience, happiness, and satisfaction with life, as well as lower levels of depression and negative self-perception of aging. The implications of these results point towards the relevance of will-to-live in successful aging.

The aim of this study is twofold. First, to assess the level of agreement between radiographic damage and functional disability in older people with osteoarthritis. And second, to assess the role of coping skills and sensory pain parameters as sources of disagreement between these variables. To achieve this objective we assess, in a sample of 104 older people with osteoarthritis, the following variables: functional capacity, radiographic damage, pain coping strategies, pain intensity, pain frequency and pain duration. The results show a non-linear relationship between radiographic damage and functional disability, modified by the levels of the two variables. There was maximum agreement between low levels of radiographic damage and of functional impairment, whilst agreement decreased for moderate and high levels of radiographic damage. Certain coping strategies may help to explain this disparity., El presente trabajo persigue un doble objetivo. Primero, evaluar el grado de concordancia entre el deterioro radiológico y el nivel de capacidad funcional en las personas mayores con artrosis. En segundo lugar, analizar las fuentes de disparidad de tal concordancia, para lo que se estudia el papel de los parámetros sensoriales del dolor y de las estrategias de afrontamiento ante el mismo. Para ello se evaluaron, en una muestra de 104 personas mayores con artrosis, la capacidad funcional, el grado de deterioro físico -afectación radiológica-, las estrategias de afrontamiento al dolor y los parámetros sensoriales del dolor de intensidad, frecuencia y duración. Los resultados mostraron que la relación entre el deterioro radiológico y funcional no varía linealmente, sino que depende de los niveles de ambas variables, existiendo una concordancia máxima entre niveles bajos de deterioro funcional y de deterioro radiológico, mientras que disminuye para niveles moderados o elevados de deterioro radiológico. Ciertas estrategias cognitivas y conductuales de afrontamiento evaluadas parecen ayudar a explicar tal disparidad.

We analyzed the discriminative capacity of several risk factors for elder abuse and neglect, in order to identify what characteristics distinguish between caregivers with a high or low risk of abuse and neglect. Forty-five caregivers of relatives with dementia participated. The combination of caregiving impact, frequency of aggressive behaviors by care-recipients, stress related to provocative and aggressive behaviors, the frequency of provocative behaviors, interpersonal burden, autoefficiency expectations, quantity of help received and depression classify correctly as risk factors in 90.9% of the cases. This study permits us to identify what characteristics distinguish between caregivers with a high or low risk of abuse and neglect and caregivers.

Objectives: This study aims to explore the relationship between knowledge about aging and severity of worry in older adults, and to test the potential mediational role of intolerance of uncertainty. Method: The sample was composed of 120 community-dwelling older adults, with a mean of age of 71.0 years (SD = 6.3). Mediational analyses and structural equation modeling were used to analyze and compare different models. Results: Greater knowledge about aging was negatively related to both intolerance of uncertainty and worry, and its effect on worry was partially mediated by intolerance of uncertainty. The mediational model obtained an excellent fit to the data (i.e. Goodness of fit index (GFI) = 0.995) and clearly had a better fit than alternative models. Conclusion: These results suggest that a good knowledge of the aging process could help decrease aversive uncertainty and thus reduce the level of worry among older adults. Thus, educational programs to increase knowledge about aging could serve as one pre...

Due to the difficulties in recruiting elderly people for psychological studies, a wide range of recruitment methods has been used. The underlying assumption that the recruitment method does not seriously affect the results has to be tested. Results in different worry measures are compared between three samples which were recruited with different strategies: (i) randomization sampling from the census of an urban area (random sample; n = 97); (ii) people involved in leisure activities in senior centers (convenience sample; n = 142); and (iii) people from the close environment of psychology students (snowball sample; n = 60). People from those samples, aged 65 and more, completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (trait-worry), and the Worry Scale (contents of worry). Differences were found for several demographic characteristics. There were marked differences between samples in the percentage of individuals endorsing cut-score criteria for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), with a very high percentage for the snowball sample. For all of the worry measures, analyzes of variance revealed significantly higher total scores for the non-randomly selected samples (p < 0.01). Comparing the latter samples, higher trait worry (p < 0.01) and more worrying about health and personal competencies (p < 0.01) was found in the snowball sample. These results suggest that the sample recruitment method can specifically and seriously affect the outcomes of studies with elderly people, thus limiting the generalization of their results.

Depression is commonly associated with chronic pain, and is also a common condition in the elderly. However research in the area of depression and pain is scarce. The aim of the present work was to analyse how cognitive-behavioural and perceptual variables help to explain the presence or absence of depression in older people with chronic pain caused by osteoarthritis.A total of 104 older adults were evaluated using a protocol that measured depression, perceptual characteristics of pain (intensity, frequency and duration), beliefs about pain, self-efficacy beliefs, coping style, coping strategies and pain behaviours.Using Student's t-tests and discriminant analysis, we found that psychological variables such as catastrophizing, passive coping, complaint behaviour, avoidance, coping self-statements, ignoring pain sensations and stability and mystery beliefs help to explain depressive symptomatology.The present study confirms the important role of cognitive-behavioural variables in the discrimination between older adults who suffer pain with and without symptoms of depression. Moreover, certain variables that in young adults had been seen to play a non-adaptive role, such as ignoring pain sensations, were seen to have an adaptive function in the elderly. Also, our results are in support of depression models - such as Abramson's Hopelessness Model - proposing that depression in chronic pain patients, unlike in other groups of depressed people, is characterized by absence of self-blame feelings.

Several studies have shown that anxiety is associated with a better memory of negative events. However, this anxiety-related memory bias has not been studied in the elderly, in which there is a preferential processing of positive information.To study the effect of anxiety in a recognition task and an autobiographical memory task in 102 older adults with high and low levels of trait anxiety.Negative, positive and neutral pictures were used in the recognition task. In the autobiographical memory task, memories of the participants' lives were recorded, how they felt when thinking about them, and the personal relevance of these memories.In the recognition task, no anxiety-related bias was found toward negative information. Individuals with high trait anxiety were found to remember less positive pictures than those with low trait anxiety. In the autobiographical memory task, both groups remembered negative and positive events equally. However, people with high trait anxiety remembered life experiences with more negative emotions, especially when remembering negative events. Individuals with low trait anxiety tended to feel more positive emotions when remembering their life experiences and most of these referred to feeling positive emotions when remembering negative events.Older adults with anxiety tend to recognize less positive information and to present more negative emotions when remembering life events; while individuals without anxiety have a more positive experience of negative memories.

Wells (Behav. Cogn. Psychother. 23 (1995) 301) proposed a cognitive model, which distinguishes between two kinds of worry: type I worry (focused on external things) and type II worry or metaworry (worry about one's own thoughts and worry). Wells' model assigns a central role to metaworry in the development of excessive worry, and Wells and Carter (Behav. Res. Ther. 37 (1999) 585) found in a college sample that metaworry predicted the level of trait worry after controlling for trait anxiety and type I worry. The present study replicated their investigation with a Spanish elderly sample and supported Wells' predictions that metaworry plays a significant role in the prediction of trait worry in contrast to type I worries, even when trait anxiety or perceived uncontrollability over worry are controlled.

People with progressive dementia evolve into a state where traditional neuropsychological tests are not effective. Severe Impairment Battery (SIB) and short form (SIB-s) were developed for evaluating the cognitive status in patients with severe dementia.To evaluate the psychometric attributes of the SIB-s in patients with severe dementia.127 institutionalized patients (female: 86.6%; mean age: 82.6 ± 7.5 years-old) with dementia were assessed with the SIB-s, the Global Deterioration Scale (GDS), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), Severe Mini-Mental State Examination (sMMSE), Barthel Index and FAST.SIB-s acceptability, reliability, validity and precision were analyzed. The mean total score for scale was 19.1 ± 15.34 (range: 0-48). Floor effect was 18.1%, only marginally higher than the desirable 15%. Factor analysis identified a single factor explaining 68% of the total variance of the scale. Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.96 and the item-total corrected correlation ranged from 0.27 to 0.83. The item homogeneity value was 0.43. Test-retest and inter-rater reliability for the total score was satisfactory (ICC: 0.96 and 0.95, respectively). The SIB-s showed moderate correlation with functional dependency scales (Barthel Index: 0.48, FAST: -0.74). Standard error of measurement was 3.07 for the total score.The SIB-s is a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating patients with severe dementia in the Spanish population of relatively brief instruments.Fiabilidad y validez de la bateria de evaluacion del deterioro grave, version abreviada (SIB-s), en pacientes con demencia en España.Introduccion. Las personas con demencia progresiva evolucionan hacia un estado donde los tests neuropsicologicos tradicionales dejan de ser eficaces. La bateria de evaluacion del deterioro grave, en su forma completa (SIB) y abreviada (SIB-s), se desarrollo para evaluar el estado cognitivo de pacientes con demencia avanzada. Objetivo. Evaluar los atributos psicometricos de la SIB-s en poblacion española. Pacientes y metodos. Estudio transversal de 127 pacientes con demencia (86,6%, mujeres; edad media: 82,6 ± 7,5 años) evaluados con la SIB-s y las siguientes medidas: escala de deterioro global, miniexamen cognitivo (MEC), miniexamen del estado mental grave (sMMSE), indice de Barthel y escala del estado funcional. Resultados. La puntuacion media total de la SIB-s fue de 19,1 ± 15,34 (rango: 0-48). Efectos suelo y techo20%. El analisis factorial identifico un unico factor que explica el 68% de la varianza total de la escala. La consistencia interna fue alta (alfa de Cronbach: 0,96). La correlacion item-total corregida oscilo entre 0,27 y 0,83, y la homogeneidad de los items fue de 0,43. La fiabilidad test-retest e interevaluador fue satisfactoria (coeficiente de correlacion intraclase: 0,96 y 0,95, respectivamente), asi como la validez de constructo convergente con otras medidas cognitivas (MEC: 0,83; sMMSE: 0,9). La SIB-s mostro una correlacion moderada con escalas cognitivas de dependencia funcional (indice de Barthel: 0,48; FAST: –0,74). El error estandar de la medida fue de 3,07 para el total de la escala. Conclusiones. La SIB-s es un instrumento fiable y valido, relativamente breve, para evaluar a pacientes con demencia avanzada en la poblacion española.

[Background] The aim of this paper is to ascertain if the subjective perception of the economic situation of a household is associated with the prevalence of disability in old age, net of education level. Subjective economic perception is less non-response biased. Knowing if the self-perceived economic situation is related to disability over and above education level has important implications both for understanding the mechanisms that lead to disability and for selecting policies to reduce it., [Methods] This is a transversal study based on the pilot of the ELES survey, which is a representative survey of non-institutionalised Spaniards aged 50 and over. Only individuals whose job income levels were fixed before becoming disabled were selected to avoid the main source of reverse causality. Disability was defined as having difficulty in carrying out any of 12 activities of daily living. Education level, difficulty in making ends meet, self-perceived relative economic position of the household, age, gender, psychological disposition, and alcohol and tobacco consumption were introduced as independent variables in binary logistic models., [Results] The working sample is made up of 704 individuals of aged 60 and over. The subjective household economic situation, measured in two different ways, is strongly and consistently related with the prevalence of disability net of age, gender, education level and psychological disposition. After adjusting for age and gender, education level is no longer associated with disability. However, having economic difficulties has the same effect on disability prevalence as being 10 years older, or being a woman instead of a man., [Conclusions] As the economic situation of the elderly is much easier to improve than their formal education, our findings support feasible interventions which could lead to a reduction in the prevalence of disability., The production of this paper was endorsed by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (National R&D&I Plan: ref. CSO2011-30210-C02-01)

This article reviews the significance of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) to practitioners and researchers in clinical gerontology, more than 10 years after the scale was introduced to the scientific community. This report summarizes findings from the most relevant validation studies in which this self-report for assessing depression in elderly people has been tested. Included is discussion of the use of the GDS with specific populations (elderly medical inpatients, nursing home residents, and dementia populations), with description of the scale's psychometric properties and its utility when used with them. This article also provides data on the use of the GDS from more recent studies, including additional information on psychometric properties, influence of source bias, and the international dissemination of the GDS. We conclude that the GDS is a relevant self-report for the assessment of depression in the elderly, given its advantage over other self-reports that are not as easily administered to this age group, its utility in the detection of depression, and its adequate psychometric properties. However, the GDS does not maintain its validity in demented populations because it fails to identify depression in persons with mild to moderate dementia. Finally, some suggestions for future research are made.

Although elder abuse is not a new phenomenon, it remains hidden. There have been carried out various preliminary studies about the prevalence of elder abuse in different countries. The aim of this study is to estimate the prevalence of suspicion of elder abuse in old persons without cognitive impairment, dwelling in community, who were attended in Primary Health Care or Social Services Centres.We carried out a transverse study in which 340 elders participated.We found a 12.1% prevalence of suspicion of elder abuse. Psychological abuse suspicion was the most frequent type and it was very common the simultaneous presence of different types of abuse (psychological and physical and sexual). The suspicion of elder abuse was more frequent in women and spouses were responsible in a high great frequency.The information obtained allows advancing in the knowledge of elder abuse in Spain, where the research about this issue is poor. However, the prevalence found neither has to be considered as a social alarm nor as a social slackness.

This study has two main purposes: (a) to assess the functioning of the Geriatric Depression Scale in its Spanish version in old visually-impaired people, and (b) to assess the relevance of measuring depressive symptoms within a comprehensive assessment of psychological adjustment related to vision impairment in that population. Respondents were 329 people affiliated to the ONCE who were a representative sample of the target population. The assessment of the first goal let us to establish two cut-off points, and led to new methodological developments that combine Item Response Theory and Classical Test Theory. The results indicated that the scale is particularly useful in the target population and that it is very relevant in the assessment of psychological adjustment related to visual impairment in old people.

The main goal of the current research was to study the relationship between holding negative aging stereotypes and cognitive performance in a cognitive stimulation program in an older adult group (n=55) with Mild Cognitive Impairment.Performance and stereotypes were contrasted before and after the cognitive stimulation program.Firstly, results showed a significant improvement in associative learning and verbal recall, as well as significant stereotypes score reduction after treatment. Secondly, those who improved their associative learning performance had a higher stereotypes score before the program. Even though, this group also reduced their stereotype score.These findings show that people who improve their cognitive performance also reduce their stereotypes score. This relationship is very novel, because although the correlation between absence of stereotype and better cognitive performance has been found in the literature, a positive correlation between stereotype change and cognitive performance after a psychological treatment has not been observed before.

Background: This study examines the psychometric properties of the Dysfunctional Thoughts about Caregiving Questionnaire (DTCQ). Methods: DTCQ was administered to 227 dementia family caregivers. Results: Principal components analyses resulted in a two-factor solution: Perception of Sole Responsibility and Perfectionism. The DTCQ has a strong internal consistency and an adequate temporal stability. The DTCQ score differentiated between depressed and non-depressed caregivers, although only in the female group. Construct validity was also supported by significant relationships between DTCQ scores and global dysfunctional attitudes, social support, seeking social support and number of hours per day engaged in caring. The dysfunctional thoughts about caregiving specify rigid and inappropriate contingencies to guide and assess behavior while acting as cognitive barriers that make healthy care difficult. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that such dysfunctional thoughts have a significant relationship to variables identified as mediators in caregiving stress models. The DTCQ has potential uses for both research and clinical purposes.

Familism is considered to be a cultural value shared by different Hispanic groups. The familism scale (FS) was developed by Sabogal, Marín, Otero-Sabogal, Marín, and Perez-Stable (1987, Hispanic familism and acculturation: What changes and what doesn't? Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 9, pp. 397-412) as a self-report measure of this construct, and three dimensions were obtained through exploratory factor analysis: familial obligations, perceived support from the family, and family as referents.The purpose of the present study was to assess the underlying factor structure of the FS using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) in a sample of 135 Spanish caregivers.The original model did not fit the data well, and five items with factor loadings below 0.40 were trimmed. The fit indexes for the remaining items suggest a good fit of this model and an acceptable internal consistency index.The results suggest that the modified factor model for the FS has acceptable psychometric properties in a sample of dementia caregivers.

It is usually assumed that social desirability increases with ageing, correlates with measures of emotional well-being, and represents a potential threat to research in older adults, and should therefore be systematically controlled. However, this assumption is controversial and lacks a strong empirical basis. The present study aimed to analyze the association between social desirability and measures of emotional well-being, as well as to test for age-related differences in the changes produced in emotional state after experimental anxiety induction.We randomly assigned 149 individuals (92 university students and 52 older adults) to one of three groups: a control group and two intervention groups in which anxiety was experimentally induced.Social desirability scores were significantly higher in older persons (Hedges'g=1.22). No statistically significant correlations were found in any age group between social desirability and measures of emotional well-being. Likewise, in a series of univariate ANOVAs, no differences were found according to the degree of social desirability in changes in emotional state after anxiety induction. Overall, social desirability was not related to the changes produced by experimental anxiety induction.The present study confirms the association between social desirability and age. However, social desirability did not seem to correlate with emotional well-being in any age group. Moreover, social desirability was not related to changes in emotional state after experimental anxiety induction. These results do not support the view that social desirability is a threat to the validity of experimental studies in the elderly.

Familism has been pointed out as a key value in Hispanic culture that may or may not be associated with caregiver distress. Although groups included in the Hispanic identity have many common features, differences between Hispanic sub-groups in the relationship of familism with burden and depressive symptoms remain unexplored. The association of familism with burden and depressive symptomatology was examined in 48 Hispanic dementia caregivers from Los Angeles (CA, USA) and 60 from Madrid (Spain) through path analyses. Burden and depressive symptomatology were positively and significantly related in both samples. Familism was significantly correlated with lesser burden in the USA Hispanic caregiver sample, but with higher levels of depressive symptoms in the Spanish sample. Significant differences between Hispanic samples were found in the relationship between familism, burden, and depression, denoting the importance of specific cultural contexts influencing dementia caregiving in Hispanics.

Background Both anxiety disorders and subclinical anxiety symptoms are related to poorer health and functioning in later life. Because worry is an important component of anxiety, the accurate measurement of worry is crucial to studying the etiology, prevention and treatment of anxiety disorders. Assessment of the trait worry has emerged as the most widely used strategy to establish the presence and extent of pathological worry. However, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the most widely used measure of the trait worry, has not been validated cross-culturally in groups outside of the U.S.A. Methods We tested the psychometric properties and measurement invariance of an 8 item abbreviated version of the PSWQ (PSWQ-A) in American (N = 206) and Spanish (N = 137) older adult samples. Results Internal consistency was high and analyses supported a unidimensional solution in both samples. Measurement invariance was tested using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and Rasch models. Results of the CFA suggest that measurement invariance between the samples can be assumed for women but not for men. Rasch modeling results by gender suggested that three items have different endorsability levels in the two samples, suggesting that certain items may more closely represent the construct of the trait worry in American and Spanish older adults. Conclusions Overall, the PSWQ-A appears appropriate for cross-cultural use, although deletion of one item (item 6) may improve the psychometric properties of the scale across different populations.

Drawing upon Lawton's ecological model of adaptation and old age, this study analyses the implications of the degree of adjustment (congruence) between the self-assessed functional capacity of 33 community-dwelling elderly care receivers and their functional capacity as assessed by their respective family caregivers (N=33), for the adaptation of the elderly and for their caregivers' feelings of burden, defined as their perception of how the caregiving activity is affecting their physical, psychological and social well-being. Three groups were set up on the basis of the level of congruence between caregivers' and care receivers' reports: high capacity attribution, coincidental capacity attribution, and low capacity attribution groups. No group differences were found in the care receivers' level of functional independence as perceived by their caregivers and as assessed by the Katz Index and the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living scale. However, the results showed differences between the three groups in relation to both the care receivers' adaptation when viewed in terms of their psychological well-being and self-efficacy. Differences between the caregivers' perceived sense of burden and their perception of their relatives' independence were also found. As proposed by the Lawton model, the results support the psychological benefits, both for the caregiver and the care receiver, of an appropriate balance between the socio-environmental demands (caregivers' expectations regarding care receivers' competence) and the capacity of the individual.