Depression and Social Support among Adults in Jeju Province, South Korea

Park, Eunok

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
This study aimed to compare depression and social support according to general characteristics and to investigate the influence of social support on depression.
METHODS
This study analyzed raw data from a project funded by Jeju Province. Data were collected through home visit interview with 750 households selected by using a randomized cluster sampling method. CES-D was used to measure depression, and the Medical Outcomes Study Social Support Survey was used to measure social support. The data of 1,155 subjects were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, and regression.
RESULTS
The mean was 11.35 for depression and 75.53 for social support. Women showed a higher depression score and a lower social support score than men did. Older people; the divorced or the bereaved; and those in groups comprising people with lower education, lower social class, poor health, or high stress presented higher depression and lower social support. The result of stepwise regression showed that social support was one of the predictive variables of depression, and 22% of variance was explained by social support in this study.
CONCLUSIONS
Social support was a powerful predictive variable of depression, and it was suggested that to prevent and manage depression, strategies that enhance social support should be developed and evaluated.