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Depression as a moderator and a mediator of marital quality’s effect on older adults’ self-rated physical health

2019; Elsevier BV; Volume: 83; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.archger.2019.03.026

1872-6976

Ruoxi Chen, Jason P. Austin,

Physical Activity and Health

Depression and marital quality are both established correlates of physical health for older adults. However, there is a lack of research on the interaction between depression and marital quality on physical health, and on depression's role as a mediator of the mechanism by which marital quality affects physical health.This study aims to test the moderation and mediation effects of depression on marital quality's impact on older adults' self-rated physical health.Data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (Wave 2) (N = 2118) were used to test a latent moderated mediation structural equation model. Marital quality was constructed as a latent variable with indicators measuring its various aspects.Depression had a significant moderating effect (β = .17, SE = .04, p < .001, 95% CI [.08, .25]) on marital quality's impact on self-rated physical health: when the level of depression was low, higher marital quality was strongly associated with better self-rated physical health, but when the level of depression was high, higher marital quality became slightly associated with poorer self-rated physical health. Moreover, depression was a significant partial mediator (β = -.27, SE = .03, p < .001, 95% CI [-.33, -.21]) of the effect of marital quality on self-rated physical health.Depression plays an important role in explaining the mechanism by which older adults' marital quality affects their self-rated physical health. For marital quality to positively affect physical health, older adults need to attend to their personal mental health needs.