Depression reduces the quality of life of older adults with disabilities, adversely impacting the healthy aging of the global population. This study examined whether social participation and self-rated health play a chain mediating role between socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms in elderly people with disabilities. The data were derived from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (n = 1,354). Results indicate that total family income had a direct impact on depressive symptoms (β = -0.220, 95%CI: -0.417, -0.022) and an indirect impact through social participation (β = -0.040, 95%CI: -0.081, -0.009) and self-rated health (β = -0.149, 95%CI: -0.246, -0.055), with a significant serial mediation effect (β = -0.022, 95%CI: -0.040, -0.007). Policies should prioritize integrated delivery of economic support, social-participation facilitation, health security, and comprehensive services to provide targeted assistance to low-education disabled oldest-old adults, and should actively foster their sustained societal engagement through community-based, barrier-free, and low-tempo activity designs.
Li et al. (Mon,) studied this question.