To identify longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms and their baseline predictors among Chinese older adults with hearing loss. This study analyzed four waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) collected in 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2018. Growth mixture modeling was used to identify latent depressive symptom trajectory classes, and multinomial logistic regression was used to examine baseline predictors, including sociodemographic characteristics, health behaviors, health status, functional ability, and psychosocial factors. Among 1556 participants, four depressive symptom trajectories were identified: increasing, severe-stable, no depressive symptoms stable, and decreasing. Compared with the no depressive symptoms stable class, female sex, poor self-rated health, and poor life satisfaction were associated with higher odds of membership in symptomatic trajectories. Social inactivity was associated with the severe-stable class, whereas fair life satisfaction was associated with the decreasing class. Longer sleep duration and higher activities of daily living scores were protective factors. Depressive symptom courses among older adults with hearing loss are heterogeneous. Baseline psychosocial resources, sleep duration, and functional ability may help identify high-risk subgroups and inform targeted, hearing-friendly mental health screening and intervention strategies.
Wen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.