Effect of Elderly Leisure Functioning on Depression Scale

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to compare the difference of the tendency for depression and leisure functioning between two elderly groups in differnt socio-cultural environment. Also, this study investigated whether the difference of lesiure functioning affected the tendency for depression. The participants are 55 elderly residing in the nursing home in Seoul and 35 Sahalin returning Koreans in KangWon-Do. Leisure Diagnostic Battery (LDB) developed by Witt and Eliss (1987) was used to measure leisure functioning of the elderly and Yesavage (1983)'s Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS measured the tendency of depression. The LDB and GDS were gathered through interviewing. The result of this study reports that the tendency of depreesion in Sahalin returning Koreans was higher than the elderly in Seoul. And the result supports the hypothesis that the elderly in Seoul who have maintained higher leisure functioning showed lower depression level than the Sahalin elderly who had poor leisure functioning. In other words, there were significance between these two groups. This study suggests that education and the leisure program shoud developed and applied for the higher leisure functioning and satisfaction of the elderly (especially elderly in nursing home).