Resilience in the face of post-election violence in Kenya: The mediating role of social networks on wellbeing among older people in the Korogocho informal settlement, Nairobi

Abstract

Older people in slum settings are a vulnerable sub-group during crises, yet have received minimal attention in the development discourse. This paper examines the protective role of different types of social networks for older slum dwellers' wellbeing during adversity by investigating the relationship between social networks, the Kenyan 2007/08 post-election violence, and dimensions of wellbeing namely self-rated health, life satisfaction and happiness amongst older people in the Korogocho slum, Nairobi. The analyses are based on conditional change logistic regression models using data from a unique longitudinal survey of the health and wellbeing of older people. The results show that maintaining or increasing formal local networks reduced the detrimental effects of the post-election violence for older people's wellbeing, whilst household environment and informal local and non-local networks did not influence the relationship. Consequently, the paper provides evidence that supporting inclusive community organisations which are accessible to older people can be valuable in promoting the resilience of this population group.

Factors of Resilience in Emergency Department Nurses Who Have Experienced Workplace Violence in Taiwan

“…There are some possible explanations for these results. In this study, most of our participants were accidentally attacked or threatened verbally in the workplace; however, in other studies the participants were victims of physical violence or psychological trauma for a longer time (Bennett et al., ; Breno & Galupo, ). It might be that the accidental attack was less likely to seek help from religious beliefs than the long‐term violence.…”

“…Religious beliefs might play an important role in enhancing resilience, and such outcomes were documented in many studies (Bennett, Chepngeno-Langat, Evandrou, & Falkingham, 2015;Breno & Galupo, 2007;Hsieh, 2008;Pai, 2012). In this study, among all SNI, peer support enhanced the resilience of our participants, whereas religious beliefs and family support did not have the same effect, and this differed from our hypothesis.…”

Authors’ reply “Multifaceted changes and mortality in the elderly”

“…According to the resilience approach, a qualitative measure of changes with a division of positive and negative change tends to underestimate the effect of changes on mortality. Similar methods have been used in previous studies on resilience research, and have been highlighted as a strong research design for examining resilience …”

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