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Longitudinal Analysis of the Reciprocal Effects of Self-Assessed Global Health and Depressive Symptoms

¹ Department of Gerontology, University of Nebraska at Omaha.
² Research Scientist, MEDTAP Institute at UBC, Bethesda, Maryland.
³ Department of Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
⁴ Gerontology Program, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore.

Address correspondence to Karl Kosloski, PhD, Department of Gerontology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, University of Nebraska–Omaha, Omaha, NE 68182. E-mail: kkoslosk{at}mail.unomaha.edu

This study examined whether a reciprocal relationship exists between measures of self-assessed global health and depressive symptoms, net of covariates that included chronic illness, functional disability, education, income, gender, race, and age. Analyses of five waves of data from the Rand version of the Health and Retirement Survey (N = 7,475), using an autoregressive, cross-lagged panel design, indicated that self-assessed overall health had a modest but statistically significant and consistent effect on depressive symptoms. In contrast, the level of depressive symptoms had a statistically nonsignificant effect on self-assessed health. There has been growing interest in identifying the factors that inform self-assessments of overall health. The present findings indicate that self-assessed global health is not simply a manifestation of depressed affect.