Trauma, stress, grief, loss, and separation among older adults in prison: the protective role of coping on physical and mental wellness

"Recent evidence suggests that older adults in prison experience a high level of adverse life experiences that can be categorized as trauma, stress, grief and loss. However, there is a dearth of research that examines how older adults’ use of physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual coping resources influence their physical and mental well-being" (p. 1). This study aims to address this scarcity. Sections cover: the aging prison population crisis; demographics; cost of incarceration-financial and moral; pathways to prison; explanatory perspective and theories; a review of the relevant literature; coping and wellbeing; study objectives; method; data analysis; results according to history of traumatic and stress life experiences, socio-demographic profile, and frequencies and percentages of the occurrence of traumatic experiences, age of first occurrence, and subjective response at the time and now; path analysis; discussion; policy implications; limitations of the current study; future research directions; and conclusion. It appears that "the lifetime experiences of multiple types of trauma, stress, grief, separation, and loss are common among older adults in prison and place them at risk for later-life physical and mental decline. Multidimensional coping strategies that address physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual domains are promising intervention techniques that can improve wellbeing among older adults in prison" (p. 1).