A Study On Individual And Group Factors Of The Elderly's Depression In Community

Depression is one of the most common psychological problems. Every individual in the course of life will be more or less to experience such a mood. The depression in the elderly which is called"spiritual killer"is the most common mental disorder, as it is seriously to harm their mental health. Most of researchers usual pay attention to investigate individuals who fall body illness, so they neglect the non-clinical studies. In China, few experimental studies emphasize particularly the elderly in community because of the short research period about quality of life & social support and the focus of geriatric diseases ones in city. In addition, very few studies research the main-effect model of social support in the community elderly. Therefore it is necessary to explore the elderly depression in community and bring it into the community health service in order to improve the elderly's standard of living and perfect the system of mental health care.From the angle of community psychology, the studies on individuals must be done in context, as well as the subjects are"persons in situation". The community as the elderly's common habitation and activities plays an important part in their psychology. So this thesis used community collective efficacy as group moderator and studied on individual and group factors of the elderly's depression in community. Community collective efficacy scale revision could be a useful tool for further research. The thesis will provide new theories and experimental data as well as building the harmonious community and achieving the goal of Healthy Aging.Based on former researches, this thesis used literature summarization and questionnaire research. The questionnaire research for this thesis explored the relation between quality of life, social support, community collective efficacy and depression. 456 subjects from 53 communities joined the study, the results are as follows:(1) Community collective efficacy scale contains 4 dimensions: managing conflict, improvement of environment, cohesive force and social services. Scale has high reliability and validity.(2) Some subjects were found to experience depression. Among these subjects: 26.8% subjects experienced slight depression, 5.0% subjects experienced moderate and high depression.(3) For the elderly of community,various sexes, ages, works, marital statuses, habitations, group sports and social security are significant difference on depression, social support and quality of life.(4) Depression is negatively related to social support and quality of life; social support is positively related to quality of life.(5) On depression, social support and quality of life are both significant negative anticipation genes; on community level, community collective efficacy can positively anticipate the elderly's depression; on community level, community collective efficacy can positively anticipate the relation between depression and social support, quality of life.