Association between Types of Pain Change and Depression among Korean Older Adults: Using Latent Growth Model

Abstract The purpose of this study is to identify the types of pain changes that affect older Koreans, as well as their effects on depression. We analyzed the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA) data collected from 2010 to 2018. A data of total of 1,359 participants, aged 65 or older were used to estimate the change in pain. A latent growth model and Growth Mixture Modeling (GMM) was performed to estimate the overall change in pain and to categorize the types of pain changes. The pain changes of older adults were classified into two categories: 'low-stable', and 'high increasing'. The depression showed a stronger relationship among the high-increasing type of pain than the low-stable type. The high-increasing type had a higher percentage of women, lower-income, relatively low educational attainment, and a higher percentage of rural residents than the low-stable type. The significance of this study is that it reiterated the importance of early pain diagnosis and intervention by identifying the types of pain changes in older adults and analyzing their effects on depression. Therefore, it is especially important to pay attention to interventions that are designed to help vulnerable groups with a high risk of pain obtain effective pain management.