The longitudinal associations between attitudes to aging and attachment insecurities among combat veterans.

The experience of aging before one's time during the coronavirus pandemic among war veterans in Israel

“…It is not surprising, then, that subjective aging phenomena have been found to play a central role in predicting important outcomes during the current pandemic. For example, studies that were conducted during the COVID-19 outbreak revealed that older adults who felt older, showed higher levels of psychological distress ( Avidor et al, 2020 ; Shrira et al, 2020 ). In another study, it was found that negative perceptions of age were positively associated with anxiety symptoms and this association was even stronger among individuals with higher levels of health worries ( Bergman et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Older adults with a history of trauma who suffer from PTSS have shown increased vulnerability to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, as its threatening context may trigger stressful traumatic memories ( Solomon et al, 2021 ). Given the associations between previous traumatic exposure and PTSS, with negative shifts in SA perceptions (i.e., Avidor et al, 2020 ), the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic may potentially accelerate the subjective sense of aging of older adults with PTSS. However, the directionality of these associations is not clear, and the present study aims to disentangle the interrelationships between the effects of previous trauma, and of previous levels of subjective aging, in predicting the personal sense that one's aging has accelerated due to the pandemic, among a sample of Israeli older adults who are veterans of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.…”