Association Between Multimorbidity and Depressive Symptom Among Community-Dwelling Elders in Eastern China

Abstract

Purpose

This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and the association between multimorbidity and depressive symptoms among the elderly in eastern China.

Patients and methods

A multicenter cross-sectional study was conducted in four cities (Jianggan, Yiwu and Anji in Zhejiang Province and Taixing in Jiangsu Province) in eastern China. We collected the information on 27 chronic conditions through the self-reported medical history and used the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) short form to evaluate depressive symptoms. Multivariate Logistic regression was used to evaluate the relationship between multimorbidity and depressive symptoms.

Results

Five thousand two hundred and ninety-six participants were included into the current study, among which 2687 (50.74%) were female, with the mean ± SD age 72.0 ± 8.1 years old. The overall prevalence of depressive symptoms in eastern China was 23.5%. And the percentage of multimorbidity in depressed participants was higher compared with non-depressed participants (50.8% vs 38.8%, P<0.001). The univariate model and adjusted model suggested that participants with multiple chronic diseases were more likely to have a depressive symptom (adjusted OR=1.42; 95% CIs 1.19–1.70).

Conclusion

Depressive symptom was significantly associated with multimorbidity among the community-dwelling elderly population in eastern China.

Keywords:

• depressive symptom
• multimorbidity
• social health
• elders

Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China (No.2015FY111600). The authors would like to thank the nurses, clinicians and management staff in Primary Health Service Center of Kaixuan, Jianggan District, Hangzhou and medical students in the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University for their participation and support for this research.

Ethics

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008 (5). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.