Epidemiology of Psychological Distress in a Chinese Aging Population

本研究的目的是通过流行病学研究来阐明文化因素与中国老年人心理健康之间的关系。更具体地说，我们将研究中国老年人的心理健康轨迹，量化规范责任与心理健康之间的关系，量化规范责任对心理健康相关因素的影响程度，并研究性别差异。 我们的第二个目标是探索测试心理健康的主观和生理指标之间的相互关系的特点;并探讨规范责任的社会文化背景。中国的老龄化人口在美国和全球都在迅速增加。然而，在健康方面存在着明显的差距，特别是在心理健康、自杀、暴力和虐待老年人（虐待老年人、忽视、经济剥削和自我忽视）等问题上。 此外，在研究这些问题时，还有语言和文化的复杂性和细微差别。此外，基层支持不足，使华人社区能够在文化敏感问题上作为平等伙伴充分参与研究进程。因此，我们将建立在我们以前的社区为基础的参与性研究，以量化重要的文化因素和中国老年人的心理健康的轨迹之间的机制。在这项申请中，一个有文化能力的首席研究员和一个多机构的跨学科团队将建立在我们之前与中国社区组织合作的基础上。该提案的结果可以为医疗保健专业人员、研究人员、社区和政策制定者提供信息，以识别风险/保护因素，更好地了解疾病途径，为未来的预防和干预研究提供信息，并为改善中国老年人心理健康的实践和政策提供信息。

This goal of our project is to conduct an epidemiological study to elucidate the relationship between culture factors and psychological wellbeing in Chinese older adults. More specifically, we will examine the trajectory of psychological wellbeing in Chinese older adults, to quantify the relation between normative responsibilities with their psychological wellbeing, to quantify the degree of influence to which normative responsibilities influences health-related factors associated with psychological wellbeing, and to examine the gender differences. Our secondary aims are to explore the feasibilities of testing the inter-relations between subjective and physiological measures of psychological wellbeing; and to explore the socio-cultural context in the normative responsibilities. Chinese aging population is increasing rapidly in US and globally. However, there are marked health disparities, especially surround the issues of psychological wellbeing, suicide, violence and elder mistreatment (elder abuse, neglect, financial exploitation and self-neglect). In addition, there are linguistic and cultural complexities and nuances when studying these issues. Moreover, there has been inadequate grass-root support necessary to empower and enable the Chinese communities to fully participate in the research process as equal partners on culturally sensitive issues. Accordingly, we will build on our prior community-based participatory research to quantify the mechanisms between important cultural factors and the trajectory of psychological wellbeing in Chinese older adults. In this application, a culturally capable principal investigator and a multi-institutional interdisciplinary team will build on our prior efforts to collaborate with Chinese community organizations. The findings from this proposal could inform health care professionals, researcher, community, and policy makers to identify risk/protective factors, better understand disease pathway, inform future prevention and intervention studies, and inform the practice and policy to improve psychological wellbeing in Chinese older adults.