Abstract
Objective: The present study investigated the relative importance of various factors found to be negatively associated with depressive symptoms in older adults and assessed the potential moderating effect of sociodemographic characteristics for each factor.Method: Depressive symptoms were measured with the Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Psychological, social, and physical health measures relating to the following factors were also administered: personal growth, purpose in life, self-esteem, self-efficacy, social support, self-rated health, life satisfaction, and physical activity. Multivariate linear regression analysis was used to investigate the most important factors associated with depressive symptoms, and moderation analyses were employed to identify any moderating effects of sociodemographic factors.Results: Life satisfaction, self-esteem, and purpose in life were found to be negatively associated with depressive symptoms. Only one moderating effect was observed—the negative relationship between life satisfaction and depressive symptoms was significantly stronger among the younger respondents.Conclusion: These findings suggest that strategies for the prevention or amelioration of depressive symptoms across subgroups of the senior population could be optimized by focusing on enhancing life satisfaction, self-esteem, and purpose in life.
Highlights
Depression is a leading cause of burden of disease worldwide [1]
With the proportion of people aged 60+ years worldwide projected to increase from 13% in 2017 to ∼21% in 2050 [2], the prevention and amelioration of depressive symptoms among older adults is recognized as a public health priority to ensure increasing life expectancy is accompanied by positive psychological well-being [3]
Univariate regression analyses showed that life satisfaction, purpose in life, personal growth, self-esteem, social support, TABLE 4 | Significant moderating effect of age between life satisfaction and depressive symptoms
Summary
Depression is a leading cause of burden of disease worldwide [1]. With the proportion of people aged 60+ years worldwide projected to increase from 13% in 2017 to ∼21% in 2050 [2], the prevention and amelioration of depressive symptoms among older adults is recognized as a public health priority to ensure increasing life expectancy is accompanied by positive psychological well-being [3]. Research investigating the trajectory of depressive symptoms in older people has found higher levels of social support, self-rated health, and physical activity to be associated with (i) fewer depressive symptoms at baseline and (ii) a lower likelihood of depressive symptoms emerging over time [24, 25] In addition to these well-established protective factors, there is growing evidence that life satisfaction, purpose in life, personal growth, self-efficacy, and self-esteem are protective against depressive symptoms [15, 26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34]
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