Trajectories of covarying depression and multiple physical health problems in middle-aged and older adults based on GBMTM: Longitudinal evidence from CHARLS.

Authors

Chunlian Wang, Yuan Wan, Yang He, Dan Jin, Jiali Huang, Jinglan Liu, Hongyan Deng

Published in

Medicine. Volume 105. Issue 39. Pages e50784. Sep 25, 2026.

Abstract

Depression in middle-aged and older adults often co-occurs with multiple physical health problems, yet its long-term co-evolution patterns remain unclear. Using data from 4 waves of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study from 2011 to 2018, group-based multi-trajectory modeling was employed to identify covarying trajectories of depressive symptoms, number of chronic diseases, chronic pain, and functional disability. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze predictive factors. A total of 8961 participants aged 45 and above were included. Four distinct trajectories were identified: stable low-risk group (40.84%), low-risk improving group (11.24%), high-risk deteriorating group (23.96%), and high-risk fluctuating group (23.96%). Older age, female gender, and rural residence were risk factors for unfavorable trajectories, while higher education level, nonagricultural household registration, and social participation were protective factors. The long-term evolution of physical and mental health in middle-aged and older adults exhibits heterogeneous trajectories, with high-risk subgroups showing synchronous deterioration across multiple health dimensions. Identifying key predictive factors can inform stratified interventions and precision health management.

PMID:
42798123
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 26 Sep 2026.

Read full publication at:
Please sign in to see all details.

Stats

1-terrible, 9-excellent. How would you rate this publication? Sign in in to submit your rating.

Post a comment

You need to be signed in to post comments. You can sign in here.

Comments

There are no comments yet.