Relation of subjective and received social support to clinical and self-report assessments of depressive symptoms in an elderly population

Background: The authors sought to evaluate the associations between depress ive symptoms and social support in a sample drawn from a relatively underst udied population - depressed elderly patients. The present study also used a multi-measure approach to assess both depressive symptomatology and socia l support, Methods: In this prospective study of 115 patients we examined: (1) the baseline relations among a self-report measure of depressive sympto ms, two clinical assessments of depressive symptoms, and subjective and rec eived social support, and (2) the ability of social support to predict chan ges in clinical assessments of depressive symptoms at 6 months and year. Ed ucation level, financial concerns, activities of daily living ratings, and gender were controlled for. Results: Baseline subjective support was negati vely related to self-reports of depressive symptoms, but unrelated to clini cal assessments at baseline or follow-up. Conversely, received support was unrelated to self-reported depressive symptoms, but positively related to b oth clinical assessments at baseline. However, higher ratings of received s upport at baseline predicted decreases in clinical ratings of depressive sy mptoms at 6 months and year. Limitations: These data were gathered in a pri marily Caucasian sample, thus the findings may nor generalize to more diver se ethnic populations. potential confounding due to treatment mode and sett ing was not controlled in the present analyses. Conclusions: These results have important implications for interpreting clinical data in elderly depre ssed patients. Specifically, when depressive symptoms are assessed using cl inician ratings, the most informative aspect of social support with respect to future clinical status appears to be received, rather than perceived, s upport measures. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.