Friday, 14 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Faith Matters, Social Support, and Coping in Late Life

Meeting Life Challenge: A Comparison of Religous, Social, and Personal Coping styles in African American and Jewish American Older Adults

Purpose: Mental health and social service providers need to understand the contextual experience of diverse aging populations and the ways they have resolved life challenges encountered. Critical life events and chronic conditions, defined in this paper as life challenges, lead to stress which motivates an active or passive behavioral reaction (Gottlieb, 1997; Snyder, 2001; Zeidner & Endler, 1996). Kahana et al.(1995) emphasize that life events and chronic conditions provide contexts of mutual interpretation among actors that may or may not result in appraisal of stress overload. In other words, such factors as the presence of social support and religious faith may moderate the stressor. This study explored the variety of life challenges identified as most prevalent in older adults and the types of coping solutions that respondents engaged.

Methods: A purposive sample of 75 urban community dwelling low-income older adults from four high-rise housing facilities participated in interviews with qualitative and quantitative components. Thirty-four participants were Jewish American and 41 study participants were African American. Interviews were conducted, transcribed, and coded using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) method of open, axial, and selective coding. Content was checked with participants and a peer reviewer also assessed the participant data and coding schemes.

Findings: Results indicate that many participants of both groups identified personal events such as bereavement and health as stressors. Thirty-three percent of Jewish Americans identified macrosocietal events such as World War II and discrimination, but no African Americans identified these. In response to an open-ended question, 83% of African Americans cited use of religious resources in coping compared to three percent of Jewish American participants. Both groups found social resources valuable in meeting life challenges, but this was generally a second option. African American respondents relied first on religious faith or religious community. Jewish American respondents relied on themselves and their own initiative first. The power of the type of problem was less salient than the power of race/ethnicity.

Implications: Mental health and social service providers can create interventions to reinforce and strengthen natural client resources that may vary according to ethnic and racial differences. Prior mastery over life challenge can help people flourish and exhibit resilience in new circumstances. It is valuable for social workers and other mental health practitioners to understand how diverse groups of ethnic elders appraise life challenges, so that they can be adequately supported. One of these challenges includes a subtext of marginalization that may have meaning for the coping response or the repertoire of responses these clients will find most valuable.

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