Abstract Background With the acceleration of population aging, community elderly care models have also received widespread attention. Geriatric depression refers to a mental disorder that first occurs after the age of 60, with persistent depressive mood as its core symptom. It seriously affects the quality of life and functional level of elderly people in the community, and its occurrence and development are closely related to the vulnerability of emotional support networks. However, traditional community elderly care services often focus on daily care and lack systematic attention to the mental health of the elderly population, especially the lack of emotional support network construction and psychological nursing interventions for patients with depression. Therefore, this study explores the emotional support network and psychological nursing intervention plan for elderly patients with depression under the background of community elderly care, in order to optimize community mental health services. Methods Randomly select 180 elderly patients with depression aged 60 years and above from two retirement communities with similar conditions as the research subjects. And the research subjects were randomly divided into an intervention group and a control group, with 90 people in each group. The control group only received routine community medical services. The intervention group received weekly emotional support network and psychological nursing intervention on the basis of the control group. The intervention plan includes social skills training, mental health education lectures, and mindfulness relaxation training. The intervention lasted for three months. Before and after the intervention, the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15) was used to assess the severity of depression, while the Lubben Social Network Scale-6 (LSNS-6) and Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS) were used to evaluate social support. The data analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.0 software and independent sample t-test, with p.05 indicating statistically significant differences. Results There were no significant differences in general information such as age, gender ratio, and weight between the two groups of patients (p.05). Before intervention, there was no significant difference in the scores of GDS-15, LSNS-6, and SSRS scales between the two groups of patients (p.05). After intervention, the GDS-15 score of the intervention group was 6.22 ± 2.14, significantly lower than the control group's 10.51 ± 2.83 (p.05). The LSNS-6 and SSRS scores of the intervention group were 19.07 ± 3.48 and 38.85 ± 4.07, respectively, which were significantly higher than those of the control group (p.05). Discussion In the context of community elderly care, implementing emotional support networks and psychological nursing interventions for elderly patients with depression can effectively alleviate depressive symptoms. Therefore, in the future, community mental health services should further incorporate psychological care and emotional support network assessment into the routine health management of elderly people in the community, and encourage the development of elderly volunteer mutual aid groups and family support alliances. However, the sample source of this study is relatively single, and future research can conduct long-term tracking in a wider community and further distinguish the specific mechanisms of different types of emotional support. Funding No. 2024-JH-RKYB-0076; No. 20250398.
Jing Liang (Sun,) studied this question.
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