Institute of Social Medicine, Occupational Health and Public Health, Public Health Research Unit, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2014 Jan;29(1):1-21. doi: 10.1002/gps.3971. Epub 2013 May 29.
Social relations have become the focus of much research attention when studying depressive symptoms in older adults. Research indicates that social support and being embedded in a network may reduce the risk for depression. The aim of the review was to analyze the association of social relations and depression in older adults.
Electronic databases were searched systematically for potentially relevant articles published from January 2000 to December 2012. Thirty-seven studies met the inclusion criteria for this review.
Factors of social relations were categorized into 12 domains. Factors regarding the qualitative aspects of social relations seem to be more consistent among studies and therefore provide more explicit results. Thus, social support, quality of relations, and presence of confidants were identified as factors of social relations significantly associated with depression. The quantitative aspects of social relations seem to be more inconsistent. Cultural differences become most obvious in terms of the quantitative aspects of social relations.
Despite the inconsistent results and the methodological limitations of the studies, this review identified a number of factors of social relations that are significantly associated with depression. The review indicates that it is needful to investigate social relations in all their complexity and not reduce them to one dimension. Simultaneously, it is important to conduct longitudinal studies because studies with cross-sectional design do not allow us to draw conclusions on causality. Beyond that, cultural differences need to be considered.
在研究老年人抑郁症状时，社会关系已成为许多研究关注的焦点。研究表明，社会支持和网络关系可以降低抑郁的风险。本综述的目的是分析社会关系与老年人抑郁之间的关系。
系统地检索了从 2000 年 1 月至 2012 年 12 月发表的潜在相关文章的电子数据库。有 37 项研究符合本综述的纳入标准。
社会关系因素被分为 12 个领域。社会关系的定性方面的因素在研究中似乎更为一致，因此提供了更明确的结果。因此，社会支持、关系质量和知己的存在被确定为与抑郁显著相关的社会关系因素。社会关系的定量方面似乎更为不一致。文化差异在社会关系的定量方面最为明显。
尽管研究存在不一致的结果和方法学上的限制，但本综述确定了一些与抑郁显著相关的社会关系因素。该综述表明，有必要全面研究社会关系，而不是将其简化为一个维度。同时，进行纵向研究很重要，因为横断面设计的研究不能使我们得出因果关系的结论。除此之外，还需要考虑文化差异。
