STRESS AND DIABETES-MELLITUS IN LATER LIFE

Research indicates that there may be a link between stressful life eve nts and the onset of diabetes mellitus. However, the wide majority of these studies have involved either children or adolescents. The purpos e of this study is to examine the relationship between stress and diab etes with data provided by a recent nationwide survey of older adults. An effort is made to improve on previous work by coupling recent deve lopments in stress measurement with the study of key coping resources (i.e., social support). Two main findings emerged from the analyses. F irst, stressors arising in social roles that are highly important to o lder adults are more strongly related to diabetes than events associat ed with roles that are less important. Second, social support buffers the deleterious effects of stressors in salient roles, but not life ev ents emerging in roles that are valued less highly.