Yue Junyue, Yoon Myeong-Sook
Department of Social Welfare, Jeonbuk National University, South Korea.
Department of Social Welfare, Jeonbuk National University, South Korea.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2025 Mar;253:104749. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104749. Epub 2025 Jan 27.
The experience of widowhood and that of living alone are significant life events that are strongly associated with depressive symptoms in older adults. Nevertheless, few studies have examined the relationship between widowhood, living alone, and depressive symptoms among Chinese older adults, particularly with regard to the duration of widowhood. This study included 4,644 older adults aged 65 and above from the 2015, 2018, and 2020 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Linear regression models were used to examine the relationship between widowhood, living alone, and depressive symptoms. Unlike previous studies, our findings indicate that living alone instead played a buffering effect on the relationship between widowhood and depression among urban older adults, especially for short-term and long-term widowhood. However, this result did not appear in the rural sample. Our study highlights the significance of considering the role of living alone in the relationship between widowhood and depressive symptoms in older adults, as well as the need to distinguish between residence and duration of widowhood.
丧偶经历和独居生活是重大的生活事件，与老年人的抑郁症状密切相关。然而，很少有研究探讨中国老年人丧偶、独居与抑郁症状之间的关系，特别是丧偶持续时间方面。本研究纳入了2015年、2018年和2020年中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）中4644名65岁及以上的老年人。采用线性回归模型来研究丧偶、独居与抑郁症状之间的关系。与以往研究不同的是，我们的研究结果表明，独居反而对城市老年人丧偶与抑郁之间的关系起到了缓冲作用，尤其是短期和长期丧偶的情况。然而，这一结果在农村样本中并未出现。我们的研究强调了考虑独居在老年人丧偶与抑郁症状关系中的作用的重要性，以及区分居住情况和丧偶持续时间的必要性。
