Depression-Mobility and Its Social Etiology: The Role of Life Events and Social Support

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
It is proposed that a depression-mobility table can be constructed in order to examine the persistence and change of depression. In a normal population sample, we found that 73 percent of the sample was in The Normals group (not depressed at Time I and 12 months later), 10 percent each in The Recovered (depressed at T1 but not at T2) and The Deteriorating (not depressed at T1 but depressed at T2) categories, and 7 percent were Chronics (depressed at T1 and T2). Furthermore, we found that improvement (The Recovered) and deterioration (The Deteriorating) were related to changes in undesirable life events and in social support provided by strong ties-companions and close friends. The results were confirmed in an analysis where the interval measures of the variables were utilized. A sequential analysis showed that the likelihood of being depressed at T2 ranged from more than 70 percent for one group to 7 percent for another. These data and research strategies have important programmatic implications.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: