Family and Cultural Correlates of Depression Among Chinese Elderly

Amy Y. Zhang, Lucy C. Yu, Jianping Yuan, Zhifu Tong, Chaoyuan Yang and Stephen E. Foreman

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 1997, vol. 43, issue 3, 199-212

Abstract: This study hypothesized that depressive experiences of the elderly could be aggravated by universal factors such as low social status, poor health, financial strain, and unhealthy lifestyle, as well as by factors specific to an indigenous socio-cultural environment (stressful family dynamics) of a given population. Three hundred and fifty Chinese subjects aged 65 or older were interviewed either at their homes or in the geriatric out-patient clinic of Beijing Hospital. Hierarchical logistic regression was used to examine significant predictors of depression. Results showed that certain social status, poor physical health, financial strain, unhealthy lifestyle, and stressful family situation explained 47 percent of the variance in depression. However, stressful family situation alone explained 13 percent of the variance in depression, indicating that family factors were important predictors of depression for Chinese elderly. Furthermore, this study demonstrated for the first time that verbal abuse within Chinese families is a significant correlate of depression among the elderly. Cultural implications of these findings are discussed.

Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002076409704300306 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:43:y:1997:i:3:p:199-212

DOI: 10.1177/002076409704300306

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Psychiatry
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().