Social Support and depression among elderly Chinese people in Hong Kong

This study examines the association between social support and depressive symptomatology in a representative community sample of 1106 Chinese people in Hong Kong aged sixty years or older. Significant bivariate relation-ships were found between depression and all dimensions of social support including social network size, network composition, social contact frequency, satisfaction of social support, instrumental/emotional support, and helping others. Using multiple regression models, the authors found that at least one measure of these six dimensions of social support was associated with depressive symptomatology, even after controlling for socio-demographic, and functional disability. We found that social support from family is impor-tant for elderly Chinese people in Hong Kong, and satisfaction with support is a more important predictor of depression levels than other objective measures of network relationships. Lastly, it was found that material aid and instru-mental support is more important in preventing depression for elderly indi-viduals in Hong Kong than emotional support. In Hong Kong, the population of persons aged sixty and above has increased from 150,000, or 5 percent of the total population, in 1961 to 616,901, or 13 percent, in *A University Research Grant (338-015-0002) funded this work. The authors wish to thank the research assistants for their assistance in the data collection and those who kindly volunteered to participate in this study