Persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) have been reported to be more at risk of developing mental illness than the general population. A cross sectional study was carried out to evaluate psychological symptoms of PLWHA. A total of one hundred and thirteen persons living with HIV/AIDS (M = 43, F = 70) with an age range of 21-65 years X = 38.00 +/- 9.68 participated in the study. Paranoid ideation,...

The general impression conveyed by the literature In the social psychology of aging is that various dimensions of the self, including self-esteem, are relatively fixed and stable by the later stages of the life cycle. Existing research implies that the self-esteem of older persons is higher than that of younger persons, and also more stable or resistant to external influences. This study examin...

Based on data collected in a nationwide survey in late 1973, this report describes the living conditions, health, social activity, and attitudes of unmarried older persons at low to middle income levels--that is, below $5,000 per year. Although most previous research has focused on the special situation of widows, the current findings indicate that lower income widowers and divorced/separated/n...

This report summarizes some of the notable recent trends in household and family characteristics and contains detailed demographic data from the March 1985 Current Population Survey. Highlights of the topics presented in the report include: 1) the number of married-couple families has increased by 3% since 1980, versus an 18% increase for other types of families; 2) household size dropped fro...

I examine how preloss emotional and instrumental dependence on one’s spouse affects older adults’ psychological adjustment to widowhood. Analyses are based on 297 persons from the Changing Lives of Older Couples (CLOC) study, a prospective study of widowhood among adults aged 65 and older. Women who were most emotionally dependent on their spouses had the poorest self-esteem while still married...

BACKGROUND The loss of a spouse has been found to have a negative effect on physical and mental health and leads to increased mortality. Whether conjugal bereavement also affects memory functioning has largely been unexamined. The present study investigates the effect of widowhood on memory functioning in older persons. METHOD The sample consisted of 474 married women and 690 married men aged...

Typical models of the decision to seek care consider information as a single conceptual object. This paper presents an alternative that allows multiple objects. For older persons seeking care, results support this alternative. Older decision-makers that segregate information into multiple conceptual objects assessed separately are characterized by socio-demographic (younger age, racial category...

The current study investigates the extent to which sexual exclusivity--the restriction of one's sexual engagements to a single partner--prevails across various marital status, union type, and co-residence categories among Nairobi's poorest residents, slum dwellers. This question is central to the spread of HIV in the increasingly urban and poor, high prevalence countries of sub-Saharan Africa, ...