Relationship between Physical Activity Level and Depression of Elderly People Living Alone

Abstract

Background and objectives: Only a few studies analyzed the physical activity level of elderly people living alone in local communities and evaluated the relationship between it and mental health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between regular physical activity and depression in the elderly living alone and to provide basic data for the prevention of depression in the elderly. Materials and Methods: We analyzed 256 elderly people living alone aged 65 years or older who completed the 2014 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Depression was defined as a score of 10 or higher using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9). This study investigated walking per week, days of muscular strength exercise performance in the past 1 week, days of flexibility exercise in the past 1 week, mean hours in a sitting position per day, the numbers of days and hours conducting a high intensity physical activity in the past 1 week, and numbers of days and hours conducting a medium intensity physical activity in the past 1 week to define physical activity. Our study presented prevalence odds ratios (pOR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) by using complex sample logistic regression analysis in order to identify the relationship between physical activity and depression. Results: The results of complex sample logistic regression analysis showed that flexibility exercise was significantly related to depression (p < 0.05). On the other hand, the mean hours in a sitting position per day, aerobic physical activity, walking, and muscular strength exercise were not significantly related to geriatric depression. Conclusions: The results of our study implied that persistent flexibility exercise might be more effective to maintain a healthy mental status than muscular strength exercise. A longitudinal study is required to prove the causal relationship between physical activity and depression in the old age.

Physical Activity, Mental Health and Consumption of Medications in Pre-Elderly People: The National Health Survey 2017

“…The results are in line with other studies indicating that PA confers considerable protection against chronic diseases (diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia) as well as mental health problems such as anxiety and depression [3,4,20,21,46]. The practice of PA helps prevent depression where it is stated that performing flexibility exercises could reduce the risk of depression by up to 81% [47]. These results are in line with those obtained in the present study where an inverse relationship between PA and depression can be observed.…”

The Association of Physical (in)Activity with Mental Health. Differences between Elder and Younger Populations: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Among the 27 studies included, 14 included elder populations of 65 years or over [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 39 , 42 , 44 , 45 , 51 , 54 ]. However, only 2 studies [ 17 , 40 ] included as covariates the interaction between age groups and PA to facilitate the comparison across age groups of PA on MH.…”

Basal myokine levels are associated with quality of life and depressed mood in older adults

“…For instance, sedentary older adult report significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression and reduced quality of life when compared to physically active individuals (de Oliveira et al., 2019). This holds for various intensities of physical activity, as, for example, Yoga interventions (Noradechanunt et al., 2017), flexibility exercise (Byeon, 2019) or marathon sports (Batmyagmar et al., 2019). There are several hypotheses regarding the pathogenesis of depression, including the monoamine hypothesis, the vascular depression hypothesis, and the cytokine hypothesis (Khalaf et al., 2015; Marathe et al., 2018).…”