Moderating effect of intrinsic religiosity on the relationship between depression and cognitive function among community-dwelling older adults

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Research has found that depression in later life is associated with cognitive impairment. Thus, the mechanism to reduce the effect of depression on cognitive function is warranted. In this paper, we intend to examine whether intrinsic religiosity mediates the association between depression and cognitive function.

Method: The study included 2322 nationally representative community-dwelling elderly in Malaysia, randomly selected through a multi-stage proportional cluster random sampling from Peninsular Malaysia. The elderly were surveyed on socio-demographic information, cognitive function, depression and intrinsic religiosity. A four-step moderated hierarchical regression analysis was employed to test the moderating effect. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS (version 15.0).

Results: Bivariate analyses showed that both depression and intrinsic religiosity had significant relationships with cognitive function. In addition, four-step moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed that the intrinsic religiosity moderated the association between depression and cognitive function, after controlling for selected socio-demographic characteristics.

Conclusion: Intrinsic religiosity might reduce the negative effect of depression on cognitive function. Professionals who are working with depressed older adults should seek ways to improve their intrinsic religiosity as one of the strategies to prevent cognitive impairment.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive function
• depression
• intrinsic religiosity
• moderating effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Long Term Research Grant Scheme (LRGS), Ministry of Education Malaysia under Grant TUA-Neuro-protective Model for Health Longevity among Malaysian Elderly [project number LRGS/BU/2012/UKM-UKM/K01].