Mediating effects of resilience and social support on self-care ability and depression in elderly with chronic diseases

ZHOU Zhihong; LIU Jiyuan; CHU Ting

doi:10.3969/j.issn.2096-9058.2025.01.007

Abstract：Objective To explore the mediating effects of resilience and social support on self-care ability and de-pression in elderly patients with chronic diseases.Methods A cluster random sampling method was used to select elder-ly patients with chronic diseases aged 60 years or above in 8 communities in Hebi City,Henan Province as the research subjects.The Barthel Index(BI),the 10-item Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Self-Rating Scale(CES-D-10),the Social Support Rating Scale(SSRS),and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale(CD-RISC)were used for on-site questionnaire survey.The mediation effect was analyzed by AMOS software,and the structural equation model was fit-ted.Results A total of 704 valid questionnaires were collected,among which 56.8%of elderly people with chronic dis-eases had depression.The self-care ability,social support,and resilience of the elderly with chronic diseases were nega-tively correlated with the degree of depression(r=-0.340,-0.631,-0.572,all P<0.05).The mediating effects of resil-ience,social support,and social support resilience on the relationship between self-care ability and depression accounted for 22.3%,45.8%,and 4.6%of the total effect,respectively.Conclusions The resilience and social support of elder-ly patients with chronic diseases have significant mediating effects on their self-care ability and depression.Therefore,for elderly patients with declining self-care ability,enhancing social support and strengthening their psychological resilience construction are of great importance in reducing the degree of depression.