A Cross-sectional Study On Depression Prevalence And Its Influencing Factors For The Empty-nest Aged People In One Rural Area Of Anhui Province

Objective Depression and empty-nest phenomenon are important public health issues, which play an important role in mental health of the rural elderly people. In order to provide scientific evidences and practical applications for health intervention, we assessed the prevalence and related influencing factors of depression and empty-nest elderly aged 60 years or more.Methods A cross-sectional survey was used for the study and a sample of the eligible aged people from administrative villages in Dang Tu County of Anhui Province were recruited by cluster sampling methods to complete the assessment. Questionnaires about old people’s physical, mental health and related social resources were applied to assess the socio-demographic, chronic conditions, depression, social support and activities of daily living. A total of 3182 people involved in the questionnaire survey. The difference in geriatric depressive state was examined to explore the influencing factors in empty-nest elderly people. Epi Data 3.1 software was used to record data and SPSS 13.0 software was used to analyze data, which include analysis of variance, t-test, chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis.Results The empty-nest elderly accounts for 78.1%(2486/3182), the proportion of the non-empty nest elderly was 21.9%(696/3182). The prevalence of aged people’s depression was 23.0%(731/3182). Of them, the prevalence of empty-nest elderly’s depression was 24.1%(599/2486), prevalence of non-empty nest elderly’s depression was 19.0%(132/696). In empty-nest elderly, scores of activities of daily living(ADL) in depression group(20.17±6.14) was higher than non-depression(16.38±3.11), scores of social support(SSRS)(31.46±6.16) was lower than non-depression(34.18±5.72), both of the differences were statistically significant. Multivariate logistic regression analysis indicated that satisfactory sleep quality, subjective and objective social support were protective factors, while suffering from lung disease, poorer self-rating economic status, body having pain or discomfort and poorer activities of daily living were risk factors for depression in empty nest elderly people. In addition, the statistical association between gender, age, religious belief, marital status, smoking and other variables and depression in empty nest elderly people were not observed.Conclusions Overall, our findings suggested that the geriatric depressive state among empty-nest aged people was common, which was influenced by individual physiological, psychological, family and many other aspects of society. So, the results suggest that more physical, mental and social support resources should be provided to geriatric depression in rural, on the one hand, we could decrease these identified risk factors and strengthen protective factors by appropriate intervention, on the other hand, we also could early detect, diagnose and treat negative consequences of depression, then the occurrence and progress of depression in elderly may be reduced, only in this way can the elderly enjoy their twilight years better.