Mental Health Following Silver Splits: A Dyadic Approach to Depressive Symptoms

Objective: Drawing on the stress generation model, emotional contagion theory, and gender-as-relational approach, this study adopts a dyadic approach to mental health following later-life separation, or “silver splits” (i.e., partnership dissolution at or after age 50), and examines whether depressive symptoms in a partner before separation can be a stress factor, potentially leading to reduced depressive symptoms afterward, with a focus on gender differences therein. Background: Later-life separation has been associated with loneliness and psychological distress among older adults, but recent evidence suggests it can also result in positive mental health outcomes for some individuals, depending on the relationship dynamics prior to the dissolution. Method: We applied multilevel dyadic lagged dependent variable models on longitudinal data from the 2002 to 2020 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (www.hrs.isr.umich.edu), focusing on 942 later life separation experiences during the observation period. Importantly, we only included cases where the individual had a cohabiting partner prior to separation and where the partner independently reported their own depressive symptoms before the separation occurred. Results: Results show that partners' higher depressive symptoms before separation were significantly associated with reductions in individuals' own depressive symptoms following separation; however, this effect was only observed among men. Conclusions: Our findings underscore the importance of moving beyond average effects when studying later-life separation and highlight the need to account for partnership dynamics prior to separation.