Modeling late-life adaptation in affective well-being under a severe chronic health condition: The case of age-related macular degeneration.

Abstract

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) was used as a case model to longitudinally study adaptation in affective well-being under a prevalent chronic health condition. Measures of positive and negative affect, obtained at 5 subsequent measurement occasions with 3-month intervals in between, were analyzed in 90 older adults diagnosed with AMD. The authors proposed a pattern of adaptation that shows initial decline in affective well-being after disease outbreak, followed by a turnaround into a restorative phase of increase, implying nonlinear intraindividual trajectories, with changes substantially related to disease duration. Analysis was conducted by means of a nonlinear mixed models approach. Results confirmed the hypothesized adaptation pattern for positive affect but not for negative affect, which was found more stable across measurement occasions.

Psychological adaptation to visual impairment: The traditional grief process revised

“…In fact, visual impairment is a severe chronic health (and functional) loss condition (Schilling & Wahl, 2006), and thus is a significant crisis by definition. For instance, visual impairment has significant negative impacts on a person's quality of life and daily living, much like cancer, constituting one of the most feared health conditions (National Coalition for Vision Health, 2008).…”

Functional ability loss in sensory impaired and sensory unimpaired very old adults: analyzing causal relations with positive affect across four years

“…Affective well-being frequently is characterized by two conditions: the presence of positive affect (PA) and the absence of negative affect (NA; Myers and Diener, 1995). As has been argued, PA has a strong "outward focus" (Kunzmann, 2008) and seems to be of high responsiveness to activity involvements such as the exertion of objective competencies in daily life (Watson, 2000; see also Schilling and Wahl, 2006, for a study with visually impaired older adults). A large number of cross-sectional (e.g., Collins et al, 2008;Hu and Gruber, 2008;Experimental Gerontology 59 (2014) Kunzmann et al, 2000;Kurland et al, 2006;Lawton, 1983;Wahl et al, 2004) as well as longitudinal (Baltes et al, 2010;Mollenkopf et al, 2006) studies provide support that PA in old age is associated with reduced FA and, as far as longitudinal evidence is concerned, FA seems to operate as a cause to maintain or lose PA (causal direction 1).…”

“…This is a major research gap because individuals affected by a hearing or vision impairment in advanced old age are significantly more threatened by a decrease in emotional resilience and report more stress or depressive symptoms than their sensory-unimpaired counterparts (e.g., Horowitz and Reinhardt, 2000), since sensory-impaired persons are more affected by unsuccessful interactions with the physical-spatial or social environment. In addition, very old SI individuals continue to lose FA over time, which may, in conjunction with increasing co-morbidity, even worsen their general life situation including PA (Heyl and Wahl, 2001;Schilling and Wahl, 2006). In addition, not much research targeting the PA-FA relationship has included individuals in advanced old age, a group generally regarded as highly vulnerable (e.g., Baltes and Smith, 1999).…”

Heterogeneity of change in state affect following insulin therapy initiation in type 2 diabetic patients

“…While stress researchers construed adaptation to stressful situations as outcome of coping (Tugade, 2011), a broader understanding of this phenomenon involves the individual's response to changing conditions (Schilling & Wahl, 2006). The predominating model of adaptation to important events, so-called "hedonic treadmill", implies a weakening of emotional response over time and in consequence returning to the emotional wellbeing that preceded the critical life event (Lyubomirsky, 2011).…”

“…Thus, some authors (Schilling & Wahl, 2006) stipulate that the dynamics of negative affect -as compared to positive affect, is characterized by lower variability, since the former is determined by personality characteristics rather than by situational factors. Evidence to the contrary comes from studies on emotion regulation in the elderly, where trajectories of both types of affect were found to depend on the context, and in the case of positive affectadditionally on the subject's physical health and personality (Aldwin, Jelong, Igarashi, & Spiro, 2014).…”