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. 2018 May 14;5(2):e38.
doi: 10.2196/mental.9802.

Temporal Associations Between Social Activity and Mood, Fatigue, and Pain in Older Adults With HIV: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Emily W Paolillo  1 , Bin Tang  2 , Colin A Depp  2   3   4 , Alexandra S Rooney  2 , Florin Vaida  2 , Christopher N Kaufmann  2   3   4 , Brent T Mausbach  2 , David J Moore  2 , Raeanne C Moore  2   3
Affiliations

Temporal Associations Between Social Activity and Mood, Fatigue, and Pain in Older Adults With HIV: An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Emily W Paolillo et al. JMIR Ment Health. .

Abstract

Background: Social isolation is associated with an increased risk for mental and physical health problems, especially among older persons living with HIV (PLWH). Thus, there is a need to better understand real-time temporal associations between social activity and mood- and health-related factors in this population to inform possible future interventions.

Objective: This study aims to examine real-time relationships between social activity and mood, fatigue, and pain in a sample of older PLWH.

Methods: A total of 20 older PLWH, recruited from the University of California, San Diego HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program in 2016, completed smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) surveys 5 times per day for 1 week. Participants reported their current social activity (alone vs not alone and number of social interactions) and levels of mood (sadness, happiness, and stress), fatigue, and pain. Mixed-effects regression models were used to analyze concurrent and lagged associations among social activity, mood, fatigue, and pain.

Results: Participants (mean age 58.8, SD 4.3 years) reported being alone 63% of the time, on average, (SD 31.5%) during waking hours. Being alone was related to lower concurrent happiness (beta=-.300; 95% CI -.525 to -.079; P=.008). In lagged analyses, social activity predicted higher levels of fatigue later in the day (beta=-1.089; 95% CI -1.780 to -0.396; P=.002), and higher pain levels predicted being alone in the morning with a reduced likelihood of being alone as the day progressed (odds ratio 0.945, 95% CI 0.901-0.992; P=.02).

Conclusions: The use of EMA elucidated a high rate of time spent alone among older PLWH. Promoting social activity despite the presence of pain or fatigue may improve happiness and psychological well-being in this population.

Keywords: AIDS; ecological momentary assessment; happiness; quality of life; social isolation.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Fatigue at each time point within each day (starting from Time 2) predicted by being alone or not alone on the previous survey. Error bar denotes 95% CI for the mean.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The predicted proportion of surveys on which participants reported being alone over time based on pain levels.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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