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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Social support deficits, loneliness and life events as risk factors for depression in old age
— the Gospel Oak Project VI | | Author(s) | M J Prince, R H Harwood, R A Blizard |
| Journal title | Psychological Medicine, vol 27, no 2, 1997 |
| Pages | pp 323-332 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Isolation ; Ill health ; Bereavement ; Stress ; Evaluation ; Camden. |
| Annotation | A companion paper from this project reported a very strong cross-sectional association between handicap and late-life depression. This paper focuses on the cross-sectional relationship between depression and demographic variables, social support, and life events in a survey of over 65s in Gospel Oak, London Borough of Camden. There was moderate association between SHORT-CARE pervasive depression and the number of life events experienced over the previous year. Personal illness, bereavement and theft were the most salient events. There was a stronger, graded relationship between the number of the social support deficits and depression. Number of social support deficits also related to age, handicap, loneliness and use of homecare services. Loneliness was itself strongly associated with depression. The cross-sectional design of the study limited interpretation of the exact nature of the relationship between social support, loneliness, handicap and depression. However, the clustering of these four factors can be used to define a large part of the older population with a poor quality of life, for which future research needs to develop strategies to deal with some or all of these problems among older people in general. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-971031204 A |
| Classmark | ENR: TP: CH: DW: QNH: 4C: 82L8 * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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