Life event stress and its relationship with mental health among elderly residents in Shandong province

Objective To investigate the level of life event stress and its correlation with mental health among the elderly.Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among 2 200 community people aged 60 years and above selected with multi-stage stratified random sampling in Shandong province from January 1st to February 28th,2015.Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90),Social Support Rating Scale,Life Events Scale,and a self-designed questionnaire on demography were adopted in the survey.Results For the 2 013 participants with eligible information,the score of life event stress ranged from 0 to 239,with a median value of 14.00 and a quartile interval of 28.00.The life events frequently reported by the elderly were suffering from chronic diseases (55.44%);retirement (31.59%),and hospitalization (30.35%).Multivariate logistic analysis showed that gender,education level,marital status,self-care ability,and the type of chronic diseases suffered from had significant effect on the level of life event stress among the elderly (P<0.05 for all).There was a positive correlation between the scores of stress level and SCL-90 (r=0.532,P<0.01)and strong associations of family related life event (r=0.481,P<0.01) and negative life event (r=0.516,P<0.01) with mental health status were observed among the elderly.Conclusion Gender,education level,marital status,self-care ability,and the type of chronic diseases suffered from are main influencing factors of life event stress and life event stress is reversely correlated with mental health status among the elderly in Shandong province.