tailieunhanh - Children and Mental Health of Elderly

It is concluded that coordination between elderly housing and health care is inefficient and that they should be more integrated with one another. The other recommendations are based on the following five principals: preserving the existing housing stock; expanding successful housing production, rental assistance programs, home- and community-based services, and supportive housing models; linking shelter services to promote and encourage aging in place; reforming existing Federal financing programs to maximize flexibility and increase housing production and health and service coverage; and creating and exploring new housing and service programs, models, and demonstrations. The report emphasizes that help. | Children and Mental Health of Elderly Isabella Buber Henriette Engelhardt Isabella Buber is a research scientist at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Henriette Engelhardt is Professor of Demography at the Otto-Friedrich-University of Bamberg. Abstract Only very few studies document a positive effect of social support on mental health. However the contact with one s children might be of a different quality as compared to that with friends or neighbours. Based on the international comparative data of the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe SHARE we analysed how the number of children their proximity and the frequency of contact between elderly parents and their children affect the mental health of the elderly. In view of decreasing fertility rates in Europe this determinant of mental health is of special importance as we might expect mental health to deteriorate if it is true that the existence of and contact with children has a positive effect on the mental health of their parents. Our results indicate a protective function of children. On the one hand childless people had higher levels of depression on the other hand few contacts with children also had a negative effect on the mental health of elderly parents. Moreover family status had a strong protective effect on mental health elderly people who lived with a spouse or a partner had the lowest levels of depression. When limiting the analysis to persons without a partner divorce seemed to have a stronger effect on depressions as compared to widowhood. Furthermore the presence of a spouse or partner had a much stronger protective effect on the mental health of elderly than the presence of or the contact with children. Among the ten countries participating in SHARE Spain Italy and France had high levels of depression whereas the elderly in Denmark seemed to be least depressed. European Demographic Research Papers are working papers that deal with allEuropean issues