The Effect of Living conditions and Subjective Perceptions about Life Adjustment on Depressive Mood in Older People in Taiwan.

• Main Authors: Chuang, Tuang-Hsien, 莊東憲
• Other Authors: Li, Yu-Chan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/94188602776430819089

碩士 === 國立臺北護理健康大學 === 生死教育與輔導研究所 === 100 === Due to the rise in the average life span of our people, more and more of them are forced to go through longer life in old age and are probably forced to deal with adjustments of survival and issues of life. The primary mental health problem in older population is “Depression”, which lowers older people’s social function and physiological function and is as serious as other prevalent chronic illnesses today. In the past, however, issues and research on older people focus more on discussions about risk factors or pathologization of depression. Moreover, research in our country on the influence of living conditions is little, and mostly focuses only on discussions about the amount of negative life events or kinds of stress. The self-evaluation of living conditions is seldom considered, and it is a shortage of discussions about the function of older people’s subjective perceptions in the relationship between living conditions and depression. Therefore the researcher analyzes data from “Survey of Health and Living Status of the Middle Aged and Elderly in Taiwan Survey Report” held by Bureau Health Promotion, Depart of Health. R.O.C. in order to discuss the effect of different living conditions on older people’s depressive mood by means of the design of national samples, and then to take conditions of subjective perceptions in and classify them to see whether mediation is produced. Thus, the risk factors of older people’s depression are realized much more and deeper. The findings of this research are as follows: 1. Older people’s depressive mood is different based on demographic variables such as gender, marriage and education. Base on age, however, there is no difference in older people’s depressive mood; 2. In older people’s objective physiology and social living conditions, there is a strong relationship between older people’s depression with “health”, “living arrangements” and “emotional support”; 3. Regarding older people’s subjective perceptions about life adjustments, there are significant differences between “depression” and “self-evaluation of health”, “self-evaluation of living arrangements” and “self-evaluation of emotional support”; 4. The worse older people’s health becomes, the less they are satisfied with their health and emotional support; in addition, the more family members older people live with, the better their self-evaluation of emotional support becomes. What is worth noticing is that the better emotional support older people perceive, the more they are satisfied with their own health and living arrangement; 5. According to the conclusion of Baron and Kenny’s mediation hypothesis analysis model, “self-evaluation of health”, “self-evaluation of living arrangements” and “self-evaluation of emotional support” is a mediation between “health”, “living arrangements” and “emotional support” in older people’s depression; “subjective perceptions about life adjustments” is only a mediation between “health,” “emotional support” in older people’s depression.