Loneliness as a mediator in the relationship between social engagement and depressive symptoms: Age differences among community‐dwelling Korean adults

Nan Sook Park · Beom S. Lee · David A. Chiriboga · Soondool Chung

25 citations0/0 files storedHealth & Social Care in the Community

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Health disparities and outcomes Aging, Health, and Disability Health and Well-being Studies

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether loneliness mediates the relationship between social engagement and depressive symptoms and to determine how age moderates the mediation effect. Data for this study came from the survey with community-dwelling adults aged 18 and older in South Korea, from March to April 2017. The total of 1,017 respondents were drawn from three age groups (18-44, 45-64, or 65 and older). The mediating effect of loneliness was tested between each of three social engagement-related variables (family network, friend network, and perceived community support) and depressive symptoms. The results showed age differences in mediation: the effect was most pronounced in the relationship of family network with loneliness for the older group, whereas the size of friend network significantly predicted loneliness for younger adults. Both younger and older groups felt less lonely when they had a higher level of perceived community support; the middle age group remained uninfluenced by the mediation effects. Our findings confirm that loneliness is one of the mechanisms by which social engagement exerts its effect on depressive symptoms. As the Korean society embraces its growing proportions of older adults, the results of the study provide implications for adaptive strategies for changing social engagement need and mental health associated with ageing.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 25 citations exist upstream.

References

1977The CES-D Scale 2015Loneliness and Social Isolation as Risk Factors for Mortality 1994Screening for Depression in Well Older Adults: Evaluation of a Short Form of the CES-D 2010Loneliness Matters: A Theoretical and Empirical Review of Consequences and Mechanisms 2004A Short Scale for Measuring Loneliness in Large Surveys 1994Screening for depression in well older adults: evaluation of a short form of the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale).2009Social Disconnectedness, Perceived Isolation, and Health among Older Adults 2003Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and the Regulation of Emotion in the Second Half of Life

Cited by

2022Loneliness as a Mediator in the Association Between Social Isolation and Psychological Distress: A Cross-Sectional Study With Older Korean Immigrants in the United States 2024Effect of retirement on loneliness: a longitudinal comparative analysis across Australia, China and the USA

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.