The Influence Of Social Support On The Mental Health Of Disabled Elderly

China has entered the aging society in early 21 st century.As the increased risk of disability,the number of disabled elderly and the suicide risk are raising.The mental health of disabled elderly has become a hot issue for scholars.Doing research on the relationship between social support and mental health has great importance to improve the life and promote the development of the disabled persons.So the paper introduces from the following sections.Firstly of all,the realted concepts of social support and mental health are defined,the measurement of social support and relationship between social support and mental health are reviewed in this paper.The paper employs data from “China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study(CHARLS)”.A total of 1184 aging person with disability were followed up from 2011 to 2013.Secondly,the missing data are deleted and filled.This paper remove mental health samples with a missing rate of more than 50%.For the other missing data,the accuracy based on the random forest imputation and the mean imputation is selected to fill the corresponding missing data.Thirdly,factor analysis is used to extract the three main factors of mental health,including physical health,depression health and positive emotional health.The paper analyze social support,mental health and relationship between social support and mental health,and finds: 1)The informal social support of family members decreasing,while the informal social support of non-family members and the formal social support increasing.2)Those who is Male,rural areas and have lower level of education are higher financial support,but female have more emotional support.3)Disabled elderly's emotional health deteriorated,but their physical health have improved.4)Those who is Male,rural areas and have higher level of education are are relatively metal healthier.5)Informal social supportand formal social support have a significant impact on mental health.Fourthly,hierarchical linear mode are constructed to analyze the influence of formal and informal social support on the mental health of disabled elderly.The empirical results further demostrate that the relevant variables have a significant impact on mental health.1)Pension is a major factor affecting the physical health of disabled elderly.Disabled elderly with who participate in pension health scores are of 0.062 more than those than those who did not.2)Spousal support are the main factors affecting the depression health.Disabled elderly with spousal support health scores are of 0.058 higher than those without support.3)Grandchildren emotional support are the main factors affecting the positive emotional health.Disabled elderly with grandchildren emotional support health scores are of 0.090 higher than those without support.4)Those who is Male,rural areas and have higher level of education are are relatively metal healthier.Finally,the above results are discussed.