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The Role Of Spiritual Well-Being In Moderating Frail Elders' Affective Response To Functional Difficulty, Marie P. Dennis, Laura N. Gitlin, Laraine Winter, Yeon K. Chee

Center for Applied Research on Aging and Health Research Papers

Anxiety and depression have been well documented as affective consequences of functional impairment. Little research, however, has examined factors that moderate these associations. The present cross-sectional study examined the role of spiritual well-being in buffering the impact of functional difficulty on the anxiety and depressive symptoms of 319 functionally vulnerable community-dwelling elders, aged 70 or older, participating in a 6-month randomized controlled trial designed to enhance function. As demonstrated in recent research on spirituality and health, we expected that spiritual well-being would moderate the association between functional difficulty and anxiety as well as the relationship between functional difficulty and depression. …