Association between life events, subjective health status and health practices in a rural population

Abstract

A survey has been conducted on subjective health status, experience of life events in recent 1 year, and health practices in the rural of Kagawa prefecture. The survey was performed from March 1995 to May 1995 with 4,013 participants, aged 40 to less than 80. The proportion of respondents who recognized their physical conditions as good decreased with age. However, the proportion of respondents who recognized their life satisfaction as good increased with age. 'Health-related' life events were the most common experienced life events for both male and female. The proportion of respondents who had life events of type 'family', 'financial', 'at workplace or job', 'in the community', and 'others' decreased with age. Men had higher proportion of 'at workplace or job' life events. The higher proportion of respondents who experienced life events recognized their subjective health status poor. For male, it observed that poor physical health status had significant association with experience of type 'in the community' and 'environmental' life events. Poor mental health status significantly associated with experience of type 'at workplace and job' life events for male, and with 'health-related' and 'family' life events for female. Poor life satisfaction significantly associated with 'at workplace or job' and 'in the community' life events for male, and with 'health related' and 'family' life events. Higher proportion of the respondents who experienced life events and recognized their subjective health status poor had low health practice scores. Logistic regression analysis showed that experience of life events and poor subjective health status had significant association with the poor health practices, especially with 'body weight changed' for both male and female.