BACKGROUND This study examines the prevalence of depression and its determinants among Chinese middle-aged and elderly arthritis patients, aiming to establish a theoretical foundation for enhancing their mental well-being and to inform the development of targeted prevention and intervention strategies.
METHODS Data from the 2018 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) were selected for this study. We used whether middle-aged and elderly arthritis patients were depressed as the dependent variable and included 16 predictor variables. The data were randomly divided into training and validation sets according to 7:3. LASSO and binary logistic regression analyses were performed in the training set to screen the predictor variables of the model and construct the model, and the model was internally validated in the validation set.
RESULTS This study included 1302 middle-aged and elderly arthritis patients, and LASSO and binary logistic regression analysis were used to construct a prediction model for depression applicable to middle-aged and elderly arthritis patients in China. The column-line graph analysis revealed that gender, age, self-rated health, trouble with body pain, life satisfaction, marital satisfaction, child satisfaction, and instrumental activities of daily living were risk factors for depression (P<0.05). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve(ROC) exceeded 0.70 in both the model training and internal validation phases, demonstrating the high accuracy of the model in predicting depression risk. In addition, decision curve analysis (DCA) and model mean calibration curve analysis further confirmed the practical value and validity of the model in depression prediction.
CONCLUSION In this study, we demonstrated that female, middle-aged, self-rated poor health, trouble with body pain, life dissatisfaction, marital dissatisfaction, children dissatisfaction, and instrumental activities of daily living difficulties are risk factors for depression among arthritis patients in the middle-aged and elderly population. We developed a predictive model for depression based on the above risk factors to provide early identification, intervention, and treatment for a high-risk group of middle-aged and elderly arthritis patients.