ArticlePDF Available

Using the caregiver system model to explain the resilience-related benefits older adults derive from volunteering

  • January 2013
Authors:
S.L. Brown
S.L. Brown
S.L. Brown
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Morris Alan Okun at Arizona State University
Morris Alan Okun
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation
Content uploaded by Morris Alan Okun
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Morris Alan Okun on Apr 22, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Rapid #: -10538775
CROSS REF ID: 1381770
LENDER: GZN :: Main Library
BORROWER: AZS :: Main Library
TYPE: Book Chapter
BOOK TITLE: The resilience handbook :
USER BOOK TITLE: The resilience handbook: Approaches to stress and trauma
CHAPTER TITLE: Using the caregiver system model to explain the resilience-related benefits older adults derive
from volunteering
BOOK AUTHOR:
EDITION:
VOLUME:
PUBLISHER:
YEAR: 2014
PAGES: 169-182
ISBN: 9780415699877
LCCN:
OCLC #:
Processed by RapidX: 4/22/2016 12:55:37 PM
This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code)
... Above 65% of the older adults above age 65 use social media (Levy et al., 2015;Perrin, 2015), and around 18% of older adults are among the caregivers (Roth, 2018), showing that a high number of caregivers who use OHCs can be older adults. Helping other people is a potential resilience factor for older adults (Bolton et al., 2016;Brown & Okun, 2013). Many of the caregivers (potentially can be among older adults) are motivated to join OHCs for the purpose of making contributions in forms of informational, emotional and even financial (White et al., 2018), and to give back the support that they have received from the community (Gavrila et al., 2019). ...
... Assisting others elevates the helper's mood, relieves the negative emotional states such as distress and sadness and improves relationship satisfaction. Extending self to others is also associated with the sense of competence, sense of mastery and perceived usefulness, and elevates the degree of receiving social support through exposing the giver to social networks (Brown & Okun, 2013). Therefore, altruistic activities of caregivers can support resilience factors of older adults, including external connections by providing social support, altruism through helping and caring for others and independence through elevating the sense of mastery and competence. ...
Online Health Communities. Contributions to Caregivers, and Resilience of Older Adults
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to investigate the potential benefits of online health communities (OHCs) for informal caregivers by conducting a systematic literature review. Secondly, to identify the relationship between the potential benefits of OHCs and resilience factors of older adults. Performing a thematic analysis, we identified the potential benefits of OHCs for informal caregivers of older adults, including two salient themes: (a) caregivers sharing and receiving social support and (b) self and moral empowerment of caregivers. Then, we uncovered how these potential benefits can support resilience of older adults. Our findings show that sharing and receiving of social support by informal caregivers, and self and moral empowerment of informal caregivers in OHCs, can support four resilience factors among older adults, including self‐care, independence, altruism and external connections. This review enables a better understanding of OHCs and Gerontology, and our outcomes also challenge the way healthcare and aged‐care service providers view caregivers and older adults. Furthermore, the identified gap and opportunities would provide avenues for further research in OHCs.
View
... Above 65% of the older adults above age 65 use social media (Levy et al., 2015;Perrin, 2015), and around 18% of older adults are among the caregivers (Roth, 2018), showing that a high number of caregivers who use OHCs can be older adults. Helping other people is a potential resilience factor for older adults (Bolton et al., 2016;Brown & Okun, 2013). Many of the caregivers (potentially can be among older adults) are motivated to join OHCs for the purpose of making contributions in forms of informational, emotional and even financial (White et al., 2018), and to give back the support that they have received from the community (Gavrila et al., 2019). ...
... Assisting others elevates the helper's mood, relieves the negative emotional states such as distress and sadness and improves relationship satisfaction. Extending self to others is also associated with the sense of competence, sense of mastery and perceived usefulness, and elevates the degree of receiving social support through exposing the giver to social networks (Brown & Okun, 2013). Therefore, altruistic activities of caregivers can support resilience factors of older adults, including external connections by providing social support, altruism through helping and caring for others and independence through elevating the sense of mastery and competence. ...
Online Health Communities, Contributions to Caregivers, and Resilience of Older Adults
Preprint
  • Nov 2020
The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to investigate the potential benefits of Online Health Communities (OHCs) for informal caregivers by conducting a systematic literature review. Secondly, identify the relationship between the potential benefits of OHCs and resilience factors of older adults. Performing a thematic analysis, we identified the potential benefits of OHCs for informal caregivers of older adults, including two salient themes: (i) caregivers sharing and receiving social support and (ii) self and moral empowerment of caregivers. Then, we uncovered how these potential benefits can support resilience of older adults. Our findings show that sharing and receiving of social support by informal caregivers, and self and moral empowerment of informal caregivers in OHCs, can support four resilience factors among older adults, including self-care, independence, altruism, and external connections. This review enables a better understanding of OHCs and Gerontology, and our outcomes also challenge the way healthcare and aged-care service providers view caregivers and older adults. Furthermore, the identified gap and opportunities would provide avenues for further research in OHCs.
View
... Activities that are explicitly directed toward helping others in need offer unique health benefits. Models of compassionate neurobiology and caregiving system (Brown & Okun, 2013) shed theoretical light on why volunteerism may affect both sleep quality and inflammation. Humans have an evolved caregiving system that enables us to care and want to promote well-being of others. ...
... What are potential explanations for sleep as a compensatory pathway on chronic inflammation? The caregiving systems model posits that voluntary helping behaviors are likely antiinflammatory through neurobiological benefits such as dampened stress response (Brown & Okun, 2013), decreases in SNS activity (Eisenberger & Cole, 2012), lower blood pressure (Inagaki & Eisenberger, 2016), and increases in OT (Brown & Brown, 2015). Given that sleep as a restorative behavior offers similar "quieting" effects on the central nervous system, sufficient sleep may compensate for lack of volunteering and vice versa in the context of chronic inflammation. ...
Volunteering, Subjective Sleep Quality, and Chronic Inflammation: A 5-Year Follow-Up of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project
Article
Studies indicate that the benefits of volunteering may extend to biological risk factors in disease development including chronic inflammation, though the pathway through which volunteer activity predicts chronic inflammation remains unclear. The current project focuses on the link between volunteering and C-reactive protein (CRP) as a measure of chronic inflammation, while paying a particular attention to sleep quality as a pathway. Using panel data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project ( N = 1,124), the present study examined whether sleep quality operates indirectly linking volunteer activity and CRP (indirect pathway), compensates for the lack of volunteerism (moderation-compensation), or regulates the benefits of volunteering on CRP (moderation-regulation). The findings suggest sleep quality as a compensatory pathway, in that sufficient sleep buffers the inflammatory effect of lack of volunteerism. The findings show that helping others may be beneficial for the helpers in terms of chronic inflammation and sleep quality as interconnected health outcomes.
View
... A recent development in this field focuses on the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the link between volunteering and better health (Burr, Han, & Tavares, 2016;Han, Kim, & Burr, 2018;Kim & Ferraro, 2014). Relatedly, researchers have shown that the health benefits associated with volunteering may be understood in the context of a stress-buffering process associated with the release of protective hormones in the brain (Brown & Okun, 2014;Okun, Yeung, & Brown, 2013). This neurobiological framework for understanding the link between volunteering and health compliments other psychosocial explanations offered in earlier research. ...
... Discretion on the part of helpers regarding when and how support is provided, and the other-oriented motivations underlying the helping behavior may be among the most important factors that influence the stress-buffering processes (Brown & Brown, 2017;Inagaki, 2018). Formal volunteering, a discretionary behavior, is often considered a form of other-focused helping behavior that satisfies the conditions for triggering the neural stress-buffering process (Brown & Okun, 2014). Such characterization may be especially relevant for volunteering conducted in later adulthood, as most of the volunteer endeavors by recent cohorts of individuals in later life are performed within the context of religious organizations and health service agencies, and are likely to be motivated by the desire to help others (Foster-Bey et al., 2007;Morrow-Howell, 2010;Yamashita, Keene, Lu, & Carr, 2019). ...
Stress-Buffering Effects of Volunteering on Daily Well-Being: Evidence From the National Study of Daily Experiences
Article
  • Oct 2020
Objectives: Building on theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence linking volunteering and well-being in later life, we investigated the associations between daily engagement in formal volunteering, stressors, and negative and positive affect, focusing on the stress-buffering effect of volunteering. Methods: We used eight days of daily diary data from the second wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE II), a national survey of middle-aged and older adults (participant N = 1,320; participant-day observation N = 8,277). A series of multilevel models were estimated to assess the within-person associations between daily volunteering, stressors, and affect. Results: A direct link between daily volunteering and affect was not discovered. However, we found that the association between daily stressors and negative affect (but not positive affect) was weaker on days when volunteering was performed compared to days volunteering was not performed. Discussion: Our findings suggested that the stress-buffering effect of volunteering contributes to improved emotional well-being for participants who volunteered on a daily basis. Future studies should investigate whether such stress-buffering effects are present for other forms of helping behaviors.
View
... During the intervention, we felt we threw ourselves and our knowledge into the process: although we are experienced work counsellors, applying work counselling methods in the supervision process of a group of teachers who were only just starting their careers and who were situated in different schools and work communities in different parts of the country really posed a challenge. On the other hand, we expected that collegiality would be the strength of such a group of students, uniting the students who were in the same situation despite their distance [7]. To give both of us supervisors a similar perspective to everyday work, both of us obtained the same number of students (n = 24) according to the age group of the pupils the students taught (grades one to four and grades five to six). ...
Teaching Is a Story Whose First Page Matters—Teacher Counselling as Part of Teacher Growth
Article
Full-text available
  • Nov 2022
The starting point of the study is the work counselling process taking place in the induction phase of the students’ teaching career. The work counselling process consists of activities that support and strengthen the students’ teacher hood and their primary function as teachers by helping them to analyse their work and to attach to working life as newly graduated teachers. In this study, we use contextualisation and storytelling in the frameworks of positive pedagogy and systems theory to reflect on the students’ growth process as teachers. We also acknowledge the importance of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and, related to that, timely learning support (scaffolding) and a solution-focused approach as part of the supervision process utilising the methods of work counselling. In this study, autoethnography was used as a tool to help us reflect on our actions and work. Methods were chosen based on the thought that in the induction period, the students’ experiences function as mirrors for us supervisors, helping us to reflect on our actions and the supervision process and to form ideas and meanings based on the documented discourse data.
View
... Conformists feel that they need more self-confidence. In the final teaching practice, the support and questions from the supervisor can strengthen their teacherhood even when the supervisor is in another town (Brown & Okun 2014). Conformists are often open about their critical points, such as being left alone in a controversial situation. ...
Teaching is a Story Whose First Pages Matters – Four Type Narratives From The Beginning of a Teaching Career
Article
  • Sep 2022
From a broad perspective, the entire time spent in teacher training can be characterized as a period of professional growth. Specific professional growth and development are realized when the students enter the advanced stage of master's studies to independently practise their profession in their own class of pupils. The uncertainty of a novice teacher and, on the other hand, the ‘burden of competence’ gained from teacher training make this induction phase very sensitive and critical, as all the competencies they have obtained during teacher training should culminate in this specific phase. The development of a student into an independent teacher is a growth story in which each person's identity, experiences of teaching, and the knowledge structures gained from teacher training determine how they experience their growth, how their multiple skills develop, and how their individual growth story evolves. In this study, we look at the writings of primary school teacher students who have just entered working life. In their writings, the students who are in the beginning of their teaching career highlight their experiences, critical points, decisive moments, meaningful experiences, and professional growth in different ways. What can we, as teaching practice supervisors, learn from our students’ experiences? What conditions and actions strengthen or destabilize the teacherhood of a newly graduated teacher? This study examines these questions through type narratives specific to narrative research by summarizing the students’ experiences in four different type narratives.
View
... Second, we examined the potential effect of supporting others in light of recent research highlighting links between prosocial behavior, health, longevity, and cognition. For example, Okun and colleagues (e.g., Brown & Okun, 2014) have proposed a caregiving behavioral system, which comprises cognitions, emotions, and neurophysiological factors that underlie efforts toward actively helping others. Helping behaviors are believed to play a role in deactivating stress responses, which has positive downstream effects for immune functioning and long-term health outcomes, including cognition. ...
Social Resources as Compensatory Cognitive Reserve? Interactions of Social Resources With Education in Predicting Late-Life Cognition
Article
Objective: Access to social relationships has been linked with better cognitive performance. We examined whether social resources interact with education to predict cognitive outcomes, which could indicate that social resources fulfill a compensatory role in promoting cognitive reserve. Method: We applied multilevel growth models to 6-wave, 13-year longitudinal data from the Berlin Aging Study (aged 70-103 years at first occasion; M = 84.9 years, 50% women) and have taken into account key individual difference factors, including sociodemographic variables, medically diagnosed comorbidities, and depressive symptoms. To account for possible reverse causality, analyses were conducted on a subset of the BASE participants without dementia (n = 368), and in follow-up analyses with the full sample (n = 516) using wave-specific longitudinal assessments of probable dementia status as a covariate. Results: Larger networks were associated with better performance on tests of perceptual speed and verbal fluency, but did not interact with education, providing little support for a compensatory reserve hypothesis. An interaction of education with emotional loneliness emerged in the prediction of perceptual speed, suggesting that the educational divide in speed was minimal among people who reported lower levels of loneliness. Discussion: We discuss our results in the context of differential implications of social resources for cognition and consider possible mechanisms underlying our findings.
View
... Engaging in volunteer work may also influence older adults' daily cortisol declines. The caregiving system model illustrates a mechanism in the brain that promotes prosocial behavior by inhibiting self-serving motivations and increasing other-focused motivations (Brown & Brown, 2017;Brown & Okun, 2014). This mechanism involves a stress regulatory process partly facilitated by hormonal correlates of the caregiving system (e.g., oxytocin). ...
Functional Limitations, Volunteering, and Diurnal Cortisol Patterns in Older Adults
Article
Objectives: Older adults often experience functional limitations that affect their everyday lives, but many of them continue to make positive contributions to society and benefit from these contributions themselves. We examine (a) whether older adults’ functional limitations are associated with diurnal cortisol patterns and (b) whether these associations vary on volunteering days vs. non-volunteering days. Methods: Participants were adults aged 60+ (N = 435) from the National Study of Daily Experiences, part of the Midlife in the United States Study. They completed an initial interview on functional limitations and background characteristics, indicated volunteering activities in daily interviews, and also provided salivary samples across 4 days. Results: Multilevel models showed that older adults with greater functional limitations exhibited dysregulated cortisol awakening responses and diurnal cortisol slopes throughout the rest of the day, compared to older adults with lower limitations. Yet, we also observed a significant moderating effect of volunteering on these associations. Discussion: This study advances our understanding of functional limitations and cortisol stress responses, revealing the benefits of volunteering to older adults who experience these limitations. Rather than treating these older adults solely as care recipients, interventions should offer them opportunities to help others.
View
... Getting emotional support from the other parent was considered important and for some parents a precondition for coping. Brown and Okun (2014) found that the provision of aid also facilitated the helper's physical and psychological well-being. It improved the helper's mood and couple satisfaction as well as reduced negative emotions. ...
View
Volunteering, polygenic risk for Alzheimer's disease, and cognitive functioning among older adults
Article
Objective In the context of the public health burden posed by increases in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) prevalence around the globe and the related research efforts to identify modifiable risk factors for the disease, we sought to provide an empirical test of earlier claims that volunteering may be considered as a health intervention that could help to prevent or delay the onset of AD. Method Using nine waves of panel data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (n=9,697), we examined whether volunteering conferred cognitive health benefits in later life and whether volunteering served a gene-regulatory function to help alleviate cognitive decline associated with polygenic risk for AD. Multilevel models were used to estimate associations between volunteering, polygenic risk for AD, and cognitive functioning over time. Results We found robust within-person associations between volunteering (assessed as volunteer status and time commitment) and cognitive functioning over time, such that volunteering was associated with higher levels of cognitive functioning and slower cognitive decline. The findings also provided evidence that the within-person associations for volunteering and cognitive decline were more pronounced for older adults at higher genetic risk for developing AD. Conclusions Our findings are in line with a growing body of theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence suggesting that prosocial behaviors are directly associated with biological systems and may modify gene regulation to confer health benefits. The analytic approach taken in this study also provided a useful framework for investigating the effectiveness of other modifiable risk factors that vary over time in the context of cognitive decline related to genetic risk for AD.
View
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.