Article Title: Role of Ego Integrity, Gender and Socioeconomic Status in Depression Level of Pakistani Elderly People
Author(s): Saba Ghayas and Syeda Shahida Batool
Institute(s): Department of Psychology, University of Sargodha, Sargodha
Journal: The Pakistan Journal of Social Issues, Volume 5, 2014
Correspondence Address: Saba Ghayas, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Sargodha, saba.ghayas3@gmail.com, 03369608807
The present study was designed to examine the role of ego integrity, gender and socioeconomic status on depression level of Pakistani elderly people. Five hundred and fifteen elderly participants (304 men and 211 women; age range 60–87years), from different districts of Punjab participated in the study. Urdu translated Ego Integrity Scale (Ghayas & Batool, 2015) and Depression Subscale of DASS (Farooqi & Habib, 2010) was applied to measure the ego integrity and depression level of participants. Regression analysis illustrated ego integrity as a significant negative predictor of depression level (β = -. 30, t = -7.02, p.001). Furthermore Multivariate analysis of variance depicted the significant independent effect of gender (F=3. 92, p. 05) and socioeconomic status on depression level (F=5. 96, p. 01) of participants. Gender and socioeconomic status appeared to interact with each other and influenced the level of depression and results depicted that women belonging to the middle class were highly depressed as compared to men and women belonging to lower and higher socioeconomic classes. This study is a step to understand the factors, which are one of the reasons behind the depression level of elderly people of Pakistan.
Keywords: Ego integrity, Depression, Socioeconomic Class, gender, Elderly People
