Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health and Management, Ningxia Medical University, Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China.
Department of Science and Education, Qinghai Provincial People's Hospital, Xining, Qinghai Province, China.
PeerJ. 2022 Aug 25;10:e13938. doi: 10.7717/peerj.13938. eCollection 2022.
The mental well-being of older people has become social concern under aging times in China. Social capital has been linked to mental well-being. Our aims were to explore how social capital and the state of mental well-being of older people were changing and what the relationship between them was.
Data were from six waves of the China Family Panel Studies that were conducted between 2010 and 2020, and a total of 1,055 participants aged 60 and over were included in the analysis. The Generalized Estimated Equation model (GEE) was used to clarify the long-term relationship, and to use GEE we first defined how time points were related, in other words, an appropriate working correlation structure was supposed to choose. Therefore, correlation coefficient between measurements at two time points was calculated to choose the exchange structure. All the analyses were performed in the statistical software Stata 15.0.
The mental well-being of older people has deteriorated over time, especially we found that between 2014 and 2016, the mental well-being of older people plummeted. In addition, cognitive social capital was positively correlated with mental well-being, while structural social capital was inverse.
Policymakers are supposed to take into account the long-term impact of cognitive and structural social capital on the mental well-being of older people and to provide them with projects aimed at increasing cognitive social capital and turning the pressure of structural social capital into a source of happiness in life.
在中国老龄化时代，老年人的心理健康已成为社会关注的焦点。社会资本与心理健康有关。我们的目的是探讨老年人的社会资本和心理健康状况是如何变化的，以及它们之间的关系。
数据来自于 2010 年至 2020 年期间进行的六轮中国家庭追踪调查，共纳入 1055 名 60 岁及以上的参与者。采用广义估计方程模型（GEE）来阐明长期关系，并使用 GEE 首先定义时间点之间的关系，换句话说，应该选择适当的工作相关结构。因此，计算两次测量之间的相关系数，以选择交换结构。所有分析均在统计软件 Stata 15.0 中进行。
老年人的心理健康状况随时间恶化，特别是我们发现，2014 年至 2016 年期间，老年人的心理健康状况急剧下降。此外，认知社会资本与心理健康呈正相关，而结构社会资本则相反。
政策制定者应该考虑认知和结构社会资本对老年人心理健康的长期影响，并为他们提供旨在增加认知社会资本和将结构社会资本的压力转化为生活幸福源泉的项目。
