Personality traits and perceived social support among depressed older adults

Abstract

The contribution of personality traits and social support to mental health is well established, but to our knowledge there have been no longitudinal investigations of the relation between personality and social support in depressed older adults. In the current study, we examined a repeated measures multi-level mixed model of change in perceived social support to determine whether personality traits and depressive symptoms were associated with changes in perceived social support over the 3 year study interval in a sample of depressed older adults. Results suggest that Conscientiousness and Extraversion were personality traits that were significantly predictive of changes in perceived social support over this time interval. Based on these results it appears that, among depressed older adults, those with conscientious or extraverted personality traits are more likely to resist impulses to withdraw from relationships. In addition, these traits may lead to more satisfying interactions and greater perceived social support over time. The implications of these results are discussed.

Keywords:

• personality
• social support
• perceived social support
• depression
• older adults

Acknowledgement

This research was partially supported by grant AG 000029 from the National Institute of Aging to Dr Thorp, Dr Cheavens and Dr Cukrowicz and grant MH 01614 from the National Institute of Mental Health to Dr Lynch.

Notes

Note

1. To ensure adequate power to detect significant effects, demographic variables were not included in the main analysis. To ensure these variables did not contribute significantly to the pattern of results, the analysis was also conducted with the addition of variables representing sex, age, marital status and years of education. This repeated measures multi-level mixed model indicated significant model fit, −2 residual log likelihood = 1091.2, χ ² (5) = 90.82, p < 0.0001. Inspection of covariance parameter estimates indicated significant Z values for all estimates (all p < 0.0001). The analysis of the effects of personality variables, depressive symptoms and demographic variables on changes in perceived social support over time indicate significant effects for the impact of Consciousness (F [3, 102] = 3.47, p < 0.05) and Extraversion (F [3, 102] = 3.62, p < 0.05).