노인의 독거 여부에 따른 삶의 만족도와 우울 간 종단적 관계 비교: 잠재변인과 네트워크 접근의 통합적 활용

초록

As Korean society transitions into a super-aged society, there is an increasing focus on the development of policies and interventions designed to enhance the psychological well-being of the elderly population. It is necessary to examine the interrelationships between positive and negative aspects of psychological well-being, such as life satisfaction and depression. However, previous studies on the elderly have not thoroughly examined these reciprocal dynamics between depression and life satisfaction. Moreover, despite the importance of the solitary elderly issue, there have been no studies that explored the differences between solitary and non-solitary elderly although the different environments surrounding them suggest that the influence of depression and life satisfaction on each other may also differ. Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the longitudinal relationship between depression and life satisfaction by integrating a latent variable approach and psychometric network approach, exploring commonalities and specificities based on the living alone status. For this purpose, we analyzed the data from 16-18th Korean Welfare Panel Study, and the results confirmed that the relationship between depression and life satisfaction among the elderly is reciprocal regardless of living alone status. Additionally, the network approach revealed that health factors are crucial for achieving psychological well-being among non-solitary elderly, whereas participatory factors and emotional issues are more important for solitary elderly, respectively. Based on these findings, we suggested that interventions to improve the psychological well-being of the elderly need to consider depression and life satisfaction holistically, and that idiographic welfare tailored to group specificity is necessary.

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