The Consequences of Economic Insecurity for Loneliness, the Self-Concept, and Mental Health in a Time of Rapid Inflation
The Caregiving, Aging, and Financial Experiences Study—or CAFE Study—is a national longitudinal study of over 4,000 older adults conducted between 2021 and 2022, when Canada witnessed a historic rise in levels of inflation, raising substantial concerns for the financial well-being and mental health of Canadian older adults. The CAFE Study is uniquely poised to address these concerns. This study examined not only multiple forms of economic insecurity (difficulty affording food, housing, medical care, energy, and debt, as well as the subjective increase in cost of living), but also a breadth of measures of the self-concept (mastery, self-esteem, and mattering), in addition to social isolation and loneliness. This plenary will give an overview of trends in financial stressors confronting Canadian older adults, as well as their implications for a number of mental health outcomes, such as depression, anxiety, and anger. A central theme of this talk will be on the way that financial stress initiates a process of the degradation of self and social isolation that not only harms mental health, but also amplifies the deleterious effects of stress exposure. I use these findings as a basis to argue that Canadian sociologists of mental health must not lose sight of a fundamental component of the sociology of mental health—that the way in which stress affects mental health is a set of indirect processes, and attention to these processes is necessary in revealing the full extent of the harms of social inequality for mental health.
