TY - JOUR
T1 - Aging together in the aftermath of war
T2 - marital adjustment and subjective age of veterans and their spouses
AU - Avidor, Sharon
AU - Zerach, Gadi
AU - Solomon, Zahava
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Objectives: Trauma has long-term effects on those directly exposed to it, but it also impacts those closest to them, particularly one’s spouse, as the marital relationship is of central importance for late-life development. Furthermore, traumatic experiences have been shown to be involved in an acceleration of aging, whether through physical health, or via psychological pathways, through an older subjective age. The present work seeks to examine the mutual connections between marital adjustment and the psychological accelerated aging of both spouses among military veterans of the Israeli 1973 Yom Kippur War. Method: Data from two assessments were drawn from a larger longitudinal study. In 2008 (T1) and again in 2015 (T2), 247 veterans and their wives were interviewed on their subjective age, marital adjustment, and PTSD symptoms. Results: An actor–partner interdependence model combined with an autoregressive cross-lagged model, controlling for T1 PTSD symptoms revealed that men’s subjective age at T1 was associated with women’s subjective age at T2, and women’s subjective age at T1 was associated with men’s subjective age at T2. Women’s marital adjustment at T1 was associated with men’s marital adjustment at T2 but not the other way around. Conclusion: Spousal relationships are an important arena in the lives of older adult veterans. The present study contributes new knowledge regarding the paths that predict subjective age by taking account of the subjective age of one’s spouse, as well as levels of marital adjustment. Insights regarding secondary traumatization, as well as gender differences, for the aging process are discussed.
AB - Objectives: Trauma has long-term effects on those directly exposed to it, but it also impacts those closest to them, particularly one’s spouse, as the marital relationship is of central importance for late-life development. Furthermore, traumatic experiences have been shown to be involved in an acceleration of aging, whether through physical health, or via psychological pathways, through an older subjective age. The present work seeks to examine the mutual connections between marital adjustment and the psychological accelerated aging of both spouses among military veterans of the Israeli 1973 Yom Kippur War. Method: Data from two assessments were drawn from a larger longitudinal study. In 2008 (T1) and again in 2015 (T2), 247 veterans and their wives were interviewed on their subjective age, marital adjustment, and PTSD symptoms. Results: An actor–partner interdependence model combined with an autoregressive cross-lagged model, controlling for T1 PTSD symptoms revealed that men’s subjective age at T1 was associated with women’s subjective age at T2, and women’s subjective age at T1 was associated with men’s subjective age at T2. Women’s marital adjustment at T1 was associated with men’s marital adjustment at T2 but not the other way around. Conclusion: Spousal relationships are an important arena in the lives of older adult veterans. The present study contributes new knowledge regarding the paths that predict subjective age by taking account of the subjective age of one’s spouse, as well as levels of marital adjustment. Insights regarding secondary traumatization, as well as gender differences, for the aging process are discussed.
KW - Dyadic analyses
KW - PTSD symptoms
KW - accelerated psychological aging
KW - secondary traumatization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105062897&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13607863.2021.1916877
DO - 10.1080/13607863.2021.1916877
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AN - SCOPUS:85105062897
SN - 1360-7863
VL - 26
SP - 1479
EP - 1486
JO - Aging and Mental Health
JF - Aging and Mental Health
IS - 7
ER -