The relation between living alone and depressive symptoms in older Korean Americans: do feelings of loneliness mediate?

OBJECTIVES

As the opposite end of the continuum from social integration, social isolation may put individuals at a greater risk of poor mental health. Conceptualizing living alone as an objective and structural indicator of social isolation and loneliness as subjective perceptions of social isolation, the present study hypothesized that the relation between living alone and depressive symptoms would be mediated by the feelings of loneliness. Using older Korean Americans as the target population, the mediation model was examined in consideration of the contextual factors such as demographics (age, gender, education, perceived income, and length of stay in the USA), health (chronic conditions and functional disability), and general social integration (size of social network and community social cohesion).

METHOD: Date were drawn from surveys with 209 older Korean Americans in Central Texas (Mage = 69.6, SD = 7.5). Multivariate regression models of depressive symptoms were entered in the following order: (1) demographics, (2) health, (3) living alone, (4) social network/community social cohesion, and (5) loneliness. The mediation effect of loneliness in the relationship between living alone and depressive symptoms was separately examined using the bootstrapping method.

RESULTS

Loneliness was found to mediate the relation between living alone and depressive symptoms (indirect effect = 1.03, 95% CI = .05-2.08).

CONCLUSION

The results suggest that subjective perceptions of loneliness may explain the mechanism through which objective social isolation presents risks for depressive symptoms in older Korean Americans.