Rural older adults’ resilience in the context of COVID-19

Public health and media discourses have often portrayed older adults as a vulnerable group during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, some emerging research is showing that older adults are faring better in terms of their mental health when compared to their younger counterparts. Understanding older adults' mental well-being during the pandemic requires in-depth exploration of the different place-based resources and systems around them. In particular, rural older adults face distinct challenges and opportunities related to accessing valued resources to promote their well-being. Drawing together research on aging and multi-systemic resilience, we explored what strategies, resources, and processes rural older adults valued in the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. A series of 51 semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted from May to August 2020 with 26 rural older adults in Manitoba, Canada. Despite adversities, participants drew on and developed resources at the individual, local, community, institutional, and societal level to support their well-being. Specifically, they identified individual strategies (e.g., positivity, acceptance, and gratitude), resources in their immediate environments (e.g., opportunities to keep busy, connect with friends, family and neighbours, and outdoor visits), and community organizations that contributed to their well-being. They also identified broader systems that shaped their resilience processes, such as access to health services, opportunities to volunteer and support others, media stories, reliable information, and public health policies and practices that value older adult lives. Importantly, some resources were less accessible to some participants, highlighting the need to develop strategies that address inequitable resources at different levels. By describing rural older adults’ resilience we seek to advance the growing body of research in relation to social ecological resilience that moves beyond a focus on individual characteristics to include understanding of the role of material, social, and cultural contexts.