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PubMed2003

[Influence of social support on patients with essential hypertension].

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether social support affects blood pressure control in patients diagnosed with essential Hypertension. DESIGN: Observational, prospective study, with a year's follow-up. SERRING: Mariñamansa-A Cuña Health Centre, Ourense (Galicia), Spain. PARTICIPANTS: 236 patients diagnosed with essential hypertension in health centre controls. MEASUREMENTS: During the one-year follow-up the following clinical variables were measured: age, sex, blood pressure, severity of hypertension, tobacco consumption, alcohol consumption, presence of diabetes mellitus, hypercholesterolaemia, Body Mass Index and compliance with treatment. Social and family variables were: marital status, cultural level, economic and social status, type of family, stressful vital events and social support. RESULTS: Mean age was 63.51 (62.05-64.96); 66.1% were women. Predominant kind of family was nuclear (64.3%). 30.2% had low social network (0-1 social contacts). We found 22% poor functional social support. Social support remained stable throughout the study. Hypertense patients with poor social networks had, after control for possible confusing variables, their systolic pressure 9.59 mm Hg (2.6716,51) and diastolic pressure 4.29 mm Hg (0.448.15) higher than hypertense patients with broader social networks. CONCLUSION: Hypertense patients with a poor social network had higher blood pressure figures than hypertense patients with wider social networks.

Blood Pressure↗
PubMed2001

The Finnmark Study. A prospective population study of the social support buffer hypothesis, specific stressors and mental distress.

BACKGROUND: According to the buffer hypothesis, social support or social network may affect mental health by buffering the negative effect of stress on mental health. Previous studies have mostly been cross-sectional or have been done on selected populations, and the results have been conflicting. METHODS: The buffer hypothesis was tested in three population-based health surveys which took place in 1987, 1990 and 1993 in five coastal municipalities in Finnmark, Norway. All persons aged 40-62 years and a random sample of those aged 20-39 years were invited, and 77%, 74% and 70% attended the three health surveys, respectively. Those who had attended the health surveys more than once and had answered the key questions about mental health and social network, social support (measured both as instrumental support as well as emotional support) and stress were included in the analyses. Stress was divided into acute stress, (somatic stress, civil stress and work stress) and chronic stress (having a chronic disease, disability pension, being a single parent or providing long term nursing care for someone in the family). Growth curve analyses using mental distress as the dependent variable were used, analysing the interactional effects of various types of stressors and social network or social support. RESULTS: When all possible stressors and the sum of social network/social support were taken into consideration, total social support/network buffered the deteriorating effect of total stressor score upon mental health. The effect was weak but significant, and stronger for women than men. When each stressor was analysed separately, only a significant buffer effect of social network could be detected for work stress. For one of the chronic stressors, receiving a disability pension, a buffer effect could be demonstrated for both social network and instrumental support. CONCLUSION: The results provide some support for the buffer hypothesis, and indication of specificity in the interactions between stressor and social network/social support was found.Women, in general, had a larger buffering effect from their social network than men.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Social support networks of white and black elderly people at risk for institutionalization.

The literature examining the role of social network size and support in moderating the relationship between stress and illness in the aged population has not taken racial differences into account. This study compares the potential moderating influence of social network size and support on the relationship between life stress and depressive symptoms for black and white community-dwelling elderly people at increased risk for institutionalization. Study data come from in-person interviews with a sample of 191 old-old (75 years and older) and poor residents of a three-census-tract area in Pittsburgh. Approximately 50 percent were white and 50 percent were black. Results indicate that the moderating effects of social network size and support were different for the black people than for the white people in this sample. For white aged people, having greater social support and a larger social network reduces the association between stress and depressive symptoms, as expected. For black elderly people, however, having more network members and receiving support from them is associated with a stronger relationship between stress and depressive symptomatology.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1990

Social support networks and formal help seeking: differences between applicants to social services and a nonapplicant sample.

Measures of social network strength have been shown to be positively correlated with the health and well-being of a range of populations, including older adults. This study compares the network structure and the support available to a group of elderly applicants for public social service assistance with those of a group of elderly persons who had not sought help (also taking into account predisposing characteristics and functional impairment). The applicant group was found to have significantly smaller networks and less affective support, even when controlling for age and physical capacity.

Aged↗
PubMed1997

Social relations and depressive symptomatology in a sample of community-dwelling French older adults.

This study examined the association between social relations and mental health, specifically the relative contribution of social networks and social support to depressive symptomatology. The culturally unique representative sample consisted of 3,777 noninstitutionalized older persons living in southwestern France. The findings indicated that French older adults generally had more than 8 people in their networks, their networks consisted mostly of family members, and they felt understood by most of their network members. These older adults reported being satisfied with their social relations. Sociodemographic variables contribute (R2 = .143) to depressive symptomatology, as did social network (incremented R2 = .033) and social support (incremented R2 = .09) variables. Sociodemographic, social network, and social support variables together increased the variance explained still further (incremented R2 = .108). Results were consistent with similar analyses in the U.S. and indicated that social support variables account for more variance in depressive symptomatology than social network variables.

Activities of Daily Living↗
PubMed2001

Social ties and mental health.

It is generally agreed that social ties play a beneficial role in the maintenance of psychological well-being. In this targeted review, we highlight four sets of insights that emerge from the literature on social ties and mental health outcomes (defined as stress reactions, psychological well-being, and psychological distress, including depressive symptoms and anxiety). First, the pathways by which social networks and social supports influence mental health can be described by two alternative (although not mutually exclusive) causal models-the main effect model and the stress-buffering model. Second, the protective effects of social ties on mental health are not uniform across groups in society. Gender differences in support derived from social network participation may partly account for the higher prevalence of psychological distress among women compared to men. Social connections may paradoxically increase levels of mental illness symptoms among women with low resources, especially if such connections entail role strain associated with obligations to provide social support to others. Third, egocentric networks are nested within a broader structure of social relationships. The notion of social capital embraces the embeddedness of individual social ties within the broader social structure. Fourth, despite some successes reported in social support interventions to enhance mental health, further work is needed to deepen our understanding of the design, timing, and dose of interventions that work, as well as the characteristics of individuals who benefit the most.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2003

Social relations and self-reported health: a prospective analysis of the French Gazel cohort.

Social networks and social support are strongly associated with health, yet the pathways between social relations and health are not well understood. In one of the very few studies on this issue conducted in France, we used data from the French GAZEL cohort of employees of the national gas and electricity company, to (1) explore the relationship between the structure and function of the social environment upon self-reported health and (2) test the hypothesis that social relations directly affect health. In a prospective analysis over a 12-month follow-up period, we found that a lack of social support and dissatisfaction with social relations are predictive of poor health status, while weak social networks are not. Thus, functional aspects of social relations are better predictors of poor health than the structure of social interactions. Low social support was an independent risk factor for poor health in men and women: for men the effect was strongest among individuals who held a high occupational status, for women among those in high and low occupational groups. This study suggests that in France social relations exert an independent effect on health, modified by gender and socio-economic factors. Our results indicate that both clinicians in their practice and researchers may do well to focus increased attention on the health impact of social support.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Developing a social support network system to enhance mental and physical health.

A social network support system consists of a set of dynamic, ongoing relationships between the individual and significant others from one's immediate family, relatives, friends, work associates, or others. Through meaningful human interaction, these supportive individuals help meet a person's basic social needs by providing socioemotional aid (acceptance, affection, emotional understanding, empathy, and esteem), instrumental aid (advice, information, help with family or work responsibilities, financial aid), or both. This article provides an in-depth review of social support, explains the dynamics and importance of a viable social network system, and discusses its limitations. A number of selected topics receive special consideration: the social isolation of dentists, social support provided by one's spouse, some social aspects of female dentists, the individual's need for privacy, and personal space and loneliness.

Dentists↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The use of available social support networks by older blacks.

Research has indicated that strong social networks positively influence the health of older Black adults. However, scales used in studies to measure social support do not reveal whether these networks are actually activated. The purpose of this descriptive study was to describe the reasons older Blacks with chronic illnesses did not utilize available support networks in their health care management. Following a community-based survey of 383 older Blacks, where each participant had a social support score completed from the Lubben Social Network Scale, a smaller group of 116 Blacks was selected to participate in a qualitative interview. It was found that 59 out of the 116 older Blacks had high social support scores on the Lubben Scale, but only 40 of these individuals reported the use of support networks for the maintenance of their health regimen. These findings illustrated that some older Blacks with strong support networks chose to function independently of their social support networks in the maintenance of their health.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1996

Help-seeking for alcohol-related problems: social contexts surrounding entry into alcoholism treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous.

OBJECTIVE: The role of problem drinkers' social contexts in help-seeking patterns was investigated using recent entrants into outpatient alcoholism treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Untreated, active problem drinkers served as controls. METHOD: Subjects (N = 45, with 15 per group: 62% male) were recruited from the community. Habitual drinking practices, social network characteristics, social support, help-seeking barriers and incentives, and event occurrences during the 2 years prior to help-seeking were assessed during structured interviews. Collaterals verified subject reports. RESULTS: Alcohol-related psychosocial problems and social network characteristics specific to drinking and help-seeking differentiated the groups, whereas drinking practices, general measures of social support and event occurrences did not. Both groups who sought help reported less network encouragement to drink, more network encouragement to seek help and greater alcohol-related psychosocial problems compared to untreated problem drinkers. AA participants also received more conflicting messages about seeking help than did treatment participants, and features of AA variously attracted and repelled different problem drinkers. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate the importance of separating alcohol-specific social influences on help-seeking from more general social contextual variables and provide a social basis for distinguishing the appeal of AA from that of formal treatment. The results generally concur with studies of help-seeking for other medical and psychological disorders and support a common approach that emphasizes the social nature of help-seeking and focuses on functional rather than structural influences.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

[Isolation, social support, life events and health status].

Research on the influence of social networks and social support on health status, conducted in English-speaking countries over the past decade, is not yet widespread in France. A review of the literature reveals that this social support has undeniable effects on mental health, and less obvious effects on physical health; it also stresses the major conceptual and methodological problems encountered in socio-epidemiological approaches. It would appear necessary to construct an overall model integrating life events, coping abilities and individual psychological factors; Social support is considered as a function of social networks, fulfilling roles of emotional support, material help, information provider, egostrengthener and social normalizer. Its mechanisms for dealing with stress, especially the buffer-role hypothesis, are also discussed.

Health↗
PubMed1999

[Differential indicators of loneliness among elderly. The importance of type of partner relationship, partner history, health, socioeconomic status and social relations].

Using data from the 1992 NESTOR-survey 'Living arrangements and social networks of older adults' (N = 4494), the aim of the present study is to identify specific categories of older adults who are most vulnerable to loneliness. By looking at different types of partner relationships (first, second, and third marriages; consensual unions; partners who are not household members) and at partner histories (never married, ever divorced, ever widowed, remarried), this study elaborates on previous research which has tended to look only at the presence versus the absence of partner relationships. Findings indicate that different types of partner relationships provide differential protection against loneliness. There appears to be a 'shadow of the past' of a previous divorce or widowhood in second and third partnerships, which accounts for generally higher levels of loneliness. Single men tend to be more lonely than single women. Moreover, there are no differences in loneliness between men who have always been single and those previously married. Among single women, differences in partner history are relevant: never married single women tend to be least vulnerable to loneliness. The differences in loneliness between older adults with different types of partner relationships and partner histories are only partially attributable to network and social participation differences. The latter independently contribute to the explanation of loneliness. The role of non-social determinants (health and socioeconomic position) is also examined. The results underscore the socially isolating effects of sensory impairments. Older adults with functional limitations, and those with visual or auditory problems tend to be more lonely, findings which are only partially attributable to differences in the number and quality of social relationships. Socioeconomic circumstances primarily have an indirect influence on loneliness. Those with higher levels of educational attainment and higher incomes tend to have more extensive social networks and are therefore less prone to loneliness.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1999

Social support and subjective well-being among Hong Kong Chinese young adults.

The associations between social support and 3 measures of subjective well-being--depressive symptomatology, negative affect, and positive affect--were studied among Hong Kong Chinese young adults (N = 475) between 16 and 19 years old. Significant bivariate relationships were found between positive affect and all dimensions of social support (including social network size, social contact frequency, satisfaction with social support, instrumental support, and helping others) except composition of social network. Helping others variables and relationship satisfaction variables were negatively related to both depressive symptoms and negative affect. Multiple regression models revealed that satisfaction with relationships with family members and friends was consistently associated with all measures of subjective well-being, and number of friends felt close to was positively related to positive affect.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2001

Socioeconomic differences in the consumption of vegetables, fruit and fruit juices. The influence of psychosocial factors.

BACKGROUND: The aim was to investigate whether social network and social support factors can explain socioeconomic differences in the risk of consuming low amounts of vegetables, fruit and fruit juices. METHODS: The Malmö Diet and Cancer Study was a prospective cohort study. The present cross-sectional study examined data from a subpopulation of 11,837 individuals that completed baseline examinations in 1992-1994. Dietary habits were assessed using a modified diet history method, and socioeconomic and social network factors were measured with a structured questionnaire. Low consumption was defined as the lowest consumption quartile for vegetables and fruit, while fruit juice consumption was dichotomized to separate users from non-users. RESULTS: Socioeconomic differences were most pronounced regarding the consumption of vegetables and fruit juices. For both sexes, unskilled manual workers had a twice as high risk of low vegetable and fruit juice consumption as higher non-manual employees. No socioeconomic differences in fruit consumption were observed for men, and only moderate differences for women with a higher consumption in higher socioeconomic groups. When the psychosocial variables were introduced in the multivariate model, social participation moderately reduced the socioeconomic differences in vegetable consumption, and the female socioeconomic differences in fruit consumption, but had no effect on the socioeconomic differences in fruit juice consumption. The other psychosocial variables had no effect on the socioeconomic differences. CONCLUSION: Considerable socioeconomic differences in vegetable, fruit and fruit juice consumption were observed. Social participation seemed to be a strong determinant for these food choices. However, this effect was largely independent of the socioeconomic differences.

Beverages↗
PubMed2001

Networks in later life: an examination of race differences in social support networks.

Although there has been considerable interest in the effects of social support networks on various health outcomes for older adults, there has been little research directed toward the predictors of networks. In this study, we examine race differences in the determinants of social support network characteristics (size, frequency of interaction with network members, proportion of kin, and amount of support received and given to network members) using data from an older community sample drawn from the North Carolina site of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE) focusing on adults sixty-five and older (n = 4124). This research focuses on the extent to which race differences in network dimensions are present and whether these variations can be attributed to varying social structural positions held by African Americans and Whites. The results indicate that several race differences persist even when controlling for social structural variables. The structural argument and future implications are discussed.

Black or African American↗
PubMed1999

"Thanks for sharing that": ruminators and their social support networks.

Receiving positive social support after a trauma generally is related to better adjustment to the trauma. The personality of trauma survivors may affect the extent to which they seek social support, their perceived receipt of social support, and the extent to which they benefit from social support. The authors hypothesized that people with a ruminative coping style, who tended to focus excessively on their own emotional reactions to a trauma, compared to those without a ruminative coping style, would seek more social support, and would benefit more from social support, but would report receiving less social support. These hypotheses were confirmed in a longitudinal study of people who lost a loved one to a terminal illness.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1997

[Interview and questionnaire of social support and social assistance SONET].

The present paper introduces into the structures, psychometric properties and the development of the "Interview on the Social Network and Social Support SONET". SONET is a network-analytical tool based on conceptual and methodological considerations related to the concepts of social network and social support. It was developed by the authors over the last few years. Discussing the most important results on its psychometric properties shows that SONET has good reliability, and acceptably high proof of its validity. Relative to rehabilitation of psychiatric and somatic disorders, SONET may be used in the diagnosis of deficits in social integration and interpersonal relationships of an individual. Additionally, stressful conditions of interpersonal relationships are assessed as well. SONET is also suitable for evaluating rehabilitative interventions at the level of personal relationships. Because no single-case studies have been conducted with the instrument until now, the paper concludes by presenting results from a small sample of schizophrenic and depressive patients demonstrating its applicability for diagnostic, prognostic and evaluative problems in the field of rehabilitation.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Cancer-specific social support received by newly diagnosed cancer patients: validating the new Structural-Functional Social Support Scale (SFSS) measurement tool.

GOALS OF WORK: To investigate potentially health-enhancing domains of cancer patients' social relationships we evaluated various dimensions of social support as experienced in early cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: In consecutive samples of 72 melanoma and 103 breast cancer patients diagnosed 3-4 months earlier, we evaluated the cancer-specific social network and received social support by the Structural-Functional Social Support Scale (SFSS) validated within the study. In addition, social support was measured by the MOS Social Support Survey as perceived support, and by Seeking Social Support items from the Ways of Coping Questionnaire as coping activity. SFSS measures the number of people who have been aware of the patient's cancer and the amount of social support the patients have received from them. MAIN RESULTS: A large number of people from various potential support-providing sources had been aware of the patients' cancer, and the patients had received support through these interactions. A greater number of support providers did not mean an increase in the support received. Social support was distinguished into subgroups according to its source, but the division into functional support types was weak. Support assessed as perceived support or as a coping activity did not cover the received disease-specific support of several sources. CONCLUSIONS: With the SFSS, it was possible to obtain detailed information on the disease-specific social network and social support. It may be beneficial to distinguish support according to the sources and to also measure support beyond the closest relationships. We hope that our measure and the results obtained will assist in identifying the targets for psychosocial interventions.

Adult↗