Resilience: resistance factor for depressive symptom

Accessible summary•  Resilience is the ability of an individual or group to carry on and solve problems so that survival of hard times is more likely. Resilience protects individuals from depression and includes behaviours that can be taught to persons who are vulnerable to hardships including physical illness, psychosocial isolation and aloneness, and mental illness. •  Older adults who rated their overall health as relatively good were also more willing to talk with health providers about depressive symptoms if it was affecting their social activities, making them feel useless to others, or affecting how well they could think or concentrate. •  New research needs to occur to learn more about how to build resilience in older adults with symptoms of depression in hopes of encouraging them to talk about depressive symptoms with the health provider. The goal is to prevent symptoms from progressing to a diagnosable disorder. •  The more resilience a person demonstrates, the more likely that person is to talk with health professionals about depressive symptoms and seek care to relieve those symptoms. New research is also needed to learn which factors other than resilience and depressive symptoms have an influence on how willing older African Americans are to seek mental health care for those symptoms.Abstract The purpose was to explore influence of resilience on the willingness of African Americans aged 65 and over to seek mental health care for depressive symptoms. Specifically, the study examined relationships between personal resilience and willingness of undiagnosed, community dwelling older adults to seek mental health care for depressive symptoms. A cross‐sectional, correlational, causal modelling design was used to study older African Americans ( N = 158; 121 women and 37 men) recruited from churches, retirement organizations and senior nutrition centres. Participants completed study instruments to measure depressive symptoms, resilience, willingness to seek mental health care, and general demographics information. Descriptive statistics and multiple regression analyses were preformed. Depressive symptoms and resilience accounted for 15.4% of the willingness to seek mental health care variance; extraction of resilience lowered variance to 0.9%. A direct, predictive relationship between resilience and willingness to seek mental health care was documented. Understanding resilience and willingness to seek mental health care supports future research for interventions that bolster resilience in older adults. Identifying the influence of resilience on such willingness may provide direction for developing interventions for older African Americans and may be applicable to vulnerable, marginalized and minority older adults worldwide.