Prevalence and influencing factors of depression among empty-nest elderly in China

Objective To investigate the prevalence and related psychological and social factors of depression among empty-nest elderly in China.Methods The data of the study were extracted from the database of China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) using complex sampling to obtain 1 581 empty-nest elderly aged≥60 years as a nationally representative sample.Variable transformation ladder diagram was adopted to test normality of depression scores of the elderly and multivariate logistic regression model was applied to analyze influence factors of depression.Results The proportions of the elderly with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) score of <25,25-29,and≥30 were 20.37%,38.11%,and 41.53%,respectively.The results of univariate analysis showed that the female elderly (46.19%),the elderly living in rural area (46.19%),the single elderly (19.00%),the elderly of illiterate or semiliterate (50.31%),the elderly reporting poor self-rated health (30.25%),and the elderly with limited self-care ability in daily life (13.47%) had significantly lower CES-D score (P<0.05 for all).Multivariate analysis revealed that the elderly with poor self-rated health,with limited self-care ability in daily life,being not satisfactory with his or her life,with low personal income,living in rural area,and being illiterate were more likely to have low CES-D score.Conclusion Depression is prevalent among the empty-nest elderly and self-rated health,self-care ability in daily life,life satisfaction,personal income,and education level are important influencing factors for depression among the empty-nest elderly in China.