Evolution of perceived social support and its association with psychological distress among middle-aged and young-old Japanese: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND

Perceived social support (SS) is a key determinant of successful aging; however, its evolution with age and dynamic association with psychological distress (PD) are largely unexplored.

METHODS

We used longitudinal data from nine-wave social surveys conducted in Japan from 2013 to 2022 to track 181,126 observations from 22,419 individuals born between 1946 and 1955. We divided perceived SS into support from family members and from others, and defined PD as a Kessler 6 score (range: 0-24) ≥ 13. We conducted systematic equation modeling to examine how the evolution of SS is associated with PD after controlling for time-invariant individual attributes.

RESULTS

The prevalence of PD among those who received SS was 2.6% for men and 3.7% for women, which was considerably lower than the 6.5% and 11.4% among those who did not receive SS, respectively. Individuals tended to lose support from family members as they aged but received more support from others, thereby largely sustaining the overall SS. Of the adverse effects of losing support from family members on PD, 53.1% (standard error [SE]: 9.6%) and 55.8% (SE: 6.4%) were moderated by support from others among men and women, respectively.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that most middle-aged and young-old Japanese individuals respond smoothly to declining support from family members by increasing their reliance on support from others.