Purpose in life mediates the relationship between social activity variety and depressive symptoms in Middle-aged and older U.S. adults

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: Being socially integrated is vital to emotional well-being, partly because social connections provide purpose. Nevertheless, fewer have explored purpose in life as a potential mechanism linking social activity variety, one of the indicators of social integration, to mental health outcomes. This study examined purpose in life as a mediator in the relationship between earlier social activity variety and later depressive symptoms among U.S. adults aged 51 and above. METHOD: We ran autoregressive cross-lagged panel models using data from 4931 participants in the 2008, 2012 and 2016 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Social activity variety, purpose in life, and depressive symptoms were measured at all three waves. RESULTS: Our findings reveal that higher levels of social activity variety at Wave 1 were related to increases in purpose in life from Wave 1 to Wave 2, which, in turn, was related to lower levels of depressive symptoms at Wave 3. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that purpose in life may serve as an important link between social activity variety and mental health outcomes in later life, offering new insights into how participation in a diverse range of social activities can reduce depressive symptoms through enhanced purpose in life.

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