==== Front
Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3465
igaa057.3465
Abstracts
Session 10500 (Late Breaking Poster)
COVID-19 Pandemic
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Forward-Focused Coping Predicts Better Mental Health Outcomes in Older Adults During COVID-19 Pandemic
Jordan Leslie 1 Woodard John 2 Pena Gabriel 1 Arnold-Nedimala Naomi 1 Won Junyeon 1 Callow Daniel 1 Smith J Carson 1 1 
University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, Maryland, United States
2 
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”946 947
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Psychosocial stressors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic may increase risk of depression and anxiety in the general population. Older adults may be especially vulnerable to these psychosocial stressors and their impact on mental health outcomes. Consequently, there is an urgent need to identify protective factors for older adults. The purpose of the present study is to determine the relative contribution of coping flexibility and two distinct coping strategies, forward-focused and trauma-focused, on negative affect in older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected using an online survey, including questions about demographic information, coping, depression, and anxiety. Participants aged 50 and over were included in our analyses of depression (N = 800) and anxiety (N = 638). Results indicate that both higher coping flexibility and higher forward-focused coping predict lower depression and lower anxiety. In contrast, higher trauma-focused coping predicts slightly higher depressive symptoms but is not a significant predictor of anxiety. Our findings suggest that higher forward-focused coping may serve as a protective factor in older adults during the pandemic and, therefore, may be an effective treatment target for mental health interventions.