Association of social participation and psychological resilience with adverse cognitive outcomes among older Chinese adults: A national longitudinal study

Abstract

Background: Limited epidemiological evidence exists regarding the association of social participation and psychological resilience with cognitive health. This study aimed to comprehensively investigate the effects of social participation and psychological resilience on adverse cognitive outcomes among older adults in China.

Methods: We used two waves (2011 and 2014) of data from the Chinese Longitudinal Survey of Health and Longevity (CLHLS), and 9765 respondents were eligible for the subsequent screening for the present prospective analysis. The Cox proportional hazards model was utilized to examine the association of social participation and psychological resilience with cognitive impairment, cognitive decline and greater cognitive decline. The restricted cubic spline plots were applied to clarify the dose-response relationships between them.

Results: Compared to those with low social participation, participants with high social participation had a lower hazard ratio (HR) of 0.72 (95 % confidence interval [CI]: 0.59-0.89) for cognitive impairment, 0.85 (95 % CI: 0.76-0.94) for cognitive decline and 0.78 (95 % CI: 0.67-0.90) for greater cognitive decline. Participants with high psychological resilience had an HR of 0.77 (95 % CI: 0.63-0.95) for cognitive impairment 0.85 (95 % CI: 0.76-0.94) for cognitive decline and 0.85 (95 % CI: 0.73-0.98) for greater cognitive decline compared with those with low psychological resilience. Similar effects were observed for social participation score and psychological resilience score. The dose-response analysis also showed that the risk of adverse cognitive outcomes decreased gradually with increasing social participation scores and psychological resilience scores. Additionally, the multiplicative interaction between social participation and psychological resilience was not significant.

Limitation: All information was collected by self-report, which may lead to biases in the process of information collection.

Conclusion: In this study, social participation and psychological resilience were independently associated with a lower risk of adverse cognitive outcomes, and therefore both need to be considered as broader measures to preserve cognitive health among older Chinese adults.

Keywords: Chinese elderly; Cognitive decline; Cognitive impairment; Psychological resilience; Social participation.