IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v74y2019i2p222-231..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Friendship and Depression Among Couples in Later Life: The Moderating Effects of Marital Quality

Author

Listed:
  • Sae Hwang Han
  • Kyungmin Kim
  • Jeffrey A Burr

Abstract

Objectives The aims of the study were to examine within-person associations between social interactions with friends (one’s own and partner’s) and depressive symptoms over time among couples in later life and to investigate whether marital quality moderated the associations. Method sWe used longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (2004–2012) to examine a sample of coupled individuals (dyad N = 6,833). Dyadic growth curve models were employed to test the study hypotheses. Results Results indicated that more frequent social interactions with friends were associated with fewer depressive symptoms of individuals and there were cross-spousal effects for this association. Further, marital quality moderated the within-person association between social interaction with friends and depressive symptoms such that the association was stronger for individuals experiencing poor marital quality compared to those with better marital quality. Discussion Friendship is an important contributor to individuals’ mental health in later life, with its benefits having far-reaching consequences for one’s significant other. The implications of friendship interactions for other health domains also require investigation within the marital context.

Suggested Citation

  • Sae Hwang Han & Kyungmin Kim & Jeffrey A Burr, 2019. "Friendship and Depression Among Couples in Later Life: The Moderating Effects of Marital Quality," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 74(2), pages 222-231.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:2:p:222-231.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbx046
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thijs van den Broek & Marco Tosi, 2020. "The More the Merrier? The Causal Effect of High Fertility on Later-Life Loneliness in Eastern Europe," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 149(2), pages 733-748, June.
    2. Catherin Bosle & Hermann Brenner & Joachim E. Fischer & Marc N. Jarczok & Ben Schöttker & Laura Perna & Kristina Hoffmann & Raphael M. Herr, 2022. "The association between supportive social ties and autonomic nervous system function—differences between family ties and friendship ties in a cohort of older adults," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 263-276, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:74:y:2019:i:2:p:222-231.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.