The elderly have identified themselves by certain roles, be they father, other, or professional. When those roles no longer apply, the individual may experience stress. This can be seen among certain retired persons, and while some may believe that stress derives from overwork and not from having nothing to do, this is not the case. Stress is an internal response and may result from being roleless after a lifetime of having a clear identity.

             Review of Literature.

             Other types of loss also contribute to the degree of stress experienced by the elderly. Psychosocial variables affect stress levels, and among these, some that have a documented effect upon health status have been addressed in the literature, these being the number of symptoms and other measures of poor health status experienced by the individual, the loss of an external locus of control, and the size of (and degree of support from) the informal network of family and friends. These variables have been found to be associated with health even after controlling for income, gender, and age. Two of these variables, social support and stressful life changes, are often studied together to test the buffering hypothesis, holding that the adverse effects of high stress upon health are reduced by the presence of supportive associations, such as friends and family. The effect of locus of control upon health has been studied most often independently of the other two effects, but more and more the direction of research has been to look upon an internal locus of control as an additional buffer moderating the effect of stress on health and on life satisfaction Acredolo, Montgomery, Parks, and Pilisuk (1993) note that the three variables together had not previously been included in a single study of physical health outcomes, though the authors saw good reasons for doing so. They also point out the importance of changes in life in developing stress:.