The Relationship Between Lifestyle and Depression in the Elderly: The Mediating Role of Loneliness

The issue of the promotion of health and a healthy lifestyle seems to be one of the most important ones in psychology, which shows the ever-increasing interest of researchers in this issue and the importance of a healthy lifestyle in different age groups. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the relationship between lifestyle and depression with the mediating role of loneliness in the elderly. This was a correlational study of structural equations modeling (SEM) type. The statistical papulation included of elderly men and women living in the nursing and care centers for the elderly in Bojnord, Iran in 2022, among whom 200 elderly people were selected using convenience sampling method. The data were collected by Beck’s depression, healthy lifestyle in Iranian elderly people and social and adults’ emotional loneliness of questionnaire. Data were analyzed using SEM in SPSS-25 and Lisrel-8.8 software. The results revealed that the healthy lifestyle has a negative significant relationship with depression, and also the healthy lifestyle has a negative significant relationship with depression. Depression and loneliness had also a significant positive relationship (P<0.01). Besides, the fit indices of the model confirmed the path of healthy lifestyle and depression with the mediating role of loneliness. From a practical point of view, it can be said that teaching a healthy lifestyle to the elderly, including exercise, proper nutrition and close social contact, prevents loneliness and depression. It is necessary for researchers to conduct more research on healthy lifestyle in the elderly.