Depression among older divorced people

This ex post facto, descriptive, correlational study was designed to examine the degree of depression of 106 currently-divorced individuals over 50 years of age who had been married at least 15 years, separated not more than 4 years, divorced 3 years or less and living in Salt Lake County, Utah. Measurements of depression were obtained from the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). Findings indicate that the level of depression among the older, divorced individuals was in the low range, but slightly higher than normal subjects screened for depression by Zung. The amount of professional psychiatric help (54.9%) used by this sample may have helped to relieve the depressive effect of the divorce. They were not screened for antidepressant medications. Greater social support and positive subjective view of health were associated with lower depression scores. No relationship was found between the other demographic variables of age, gender, present income, education, employment and religion and the higher scores on the SDS.