Associations of Vision and Hearing Impairments with Depression and Cognitive Function in Later Life: Does Gender Matter?

Background: Sensory impairments, such as vision and hearing impairments, increase with age, and studies have shown that self-reported vision and hearing impairments are associated with adverse mental health outcomes in later life. Although gender differences may exist in the associations between sensory impairments and geriatric mental health outcomes, little research has been done examining gender differences in the above associations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between sensory impairments and geriatric mental health outcomes with the aim of determining whether any association differs by gender.

Methods:The study sample was drawn from a nationally representative data set, the 2012 Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and the final sample consisted of 2,167 females and 1,664 males aged 65 and over. Sensory impairments were categorized into four groups: no sensory impairment (reference), vision impairment only, hearing impairment only, and dual sensory impairment. Depression and cognitive function were used as dependent variables in separate analyses.

Results: Adjusted for confounding variables, results from a multivariate analysis showed that vision impairment was significantly associated with depression only among women. Moreover, hearing impairment was significantly associated with cognitive function for women, but not for men. Having dual sensory impairment was associated with depression only among men, while having dual sensory impairment was associated with cognitive function only among women.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that the associations between vision and hearing impairments and geriatric mental health outcomes vary according to gender. Therefore, gender-specific strategies in healthcare policies are needed.