Incident Traumatic Experiences and Poor Financial Wellbeing: A Double Hit for Cognitive Aging?

TL;DR

Traumatic events and financial struggles together may speed up memory decline in older adults, suggesting financial support could help protect cognitive health.

Contribution

This study identifies financial wellbeing as a potential modifier of traumatic experiences' impact on cognitive aging.

Findings

Experiencing traumatic events is linked to faster memory decline over 10 years.

The negative effect of trauma on memory is stronger when financial wellbeing is poor.

Financial wellbeing may be a target for interventions to slow cognitive aging.

Abstract

Traumatic experiences and financial hardship may jointly affect cognitive aging through shared stress-related pathways. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (N = 3432), we quantified the effect of incident traumatic experiences (ITE, occurring 2006-2010 or 2008-2012), defined as experiencing ≥1 events from the Lifetime Traumas index (death of a child, major natural disaster, firing/being fired upon in combat, spouse/partner/child addicted to drugs/alcohol, serious physical attack/assault, life-threatening illness/accident, or life-threatening illness/accident in spouse/child). We examined effect modification by poor financial wellbeing (FWB), defined as reporting ≥3 of 7 subjective (financial dissatisfaction, low financial control, difficulty paying bills, taking less medication because of money) and objective (low income, low non-housing wealth, no housing wealth) indicators of financial hardship. Memory was assessed biennially from 2010/2012 to 2020 via a composite score computed from direct memory assessments and proxy reports. We used linear mixed models to estimate the effect of ITE on ∼10-year memory decline overall and stratified by FWB. Models used follow-up time as the timescale and adjusted for baseline age, practice effects, sex/gender, race, educational attainment, parental education, Southern birth, childhood SES, marital status, self-rated health, and interactions between covariates and time. Overall, having ≥1 ITE was associated with accelerated memory decline (β_anyITE*time=-0.007, [95% CI:-0.012, -0.002]). The magnitude of this association was larger in the presence of poor FWB (β_anyITE*time|FWB≥3=-0.014, [-0.030, 0.003] vs. β_anyITE*time|FWB < 3=-0.006, [-0.012, -0.001]). Our results suggest financial wellbeing may modify the effects of traumatic experiences and may be a policy intervention point to delay memory decline in older adults.