Effects of Widowhood on Older Adult Suicidal Ideation and Life Satisfaction in South Korea: An Analysis from 2017 National Survey of Older Adults

Background and Purpose: Social welfare policies targeting the elderly population have been spotlighted in South Korea after becoming an Aged society. Coping with the loss of partners in the later stage of life, however, is merely recognized in Korea. Limited researches have found that spousal loss of older adults causes a high level of depressive symptoms, suicide rate, and negative impacts on life satisfaction in Korea. Therefore this paper helps to fill the gap of existing researches by exploring the general characteristics of widowed elders, indicating differences of factors for elderly suicide ideation regarding widowhood experience, and examining the association of life satisfaction and suicide ideation of the widowed elders in Korea.
This paper hypothesizes that difference exists between elderly suicide ideation and life satisfaction of the widowed and not-widowed elders, and significant correlation exists for suicidal ideation, life satisfaction, and widowhood. Ultimately, the purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of spousal loss experience on elders' life satisfaction and suicidal ideation to fully understand and support the well-being of older adults in Korea.

Methods: Data and Samples: The data of the 2017 National Survey of Older Koreans were used to analyze the effects of widowhood experience on community-dwelling older adults' (mean age 73.8±6.5, 57.3 percent female) life satisfaction and suicidal ideation. This study used the data of 9,754 respondents, excluding 498 respondents: 226 proxy respondents; 56 single; 1 responded as other in marital status; 244 diagnosed with Dementia or Alzheimer; 106 diagnosed with Parkinson's disease; 15 with severe cognitive impairments.

Measures: To determine the effects of widowhood on suicidal ideation, 1 item for suicidal thought answered 'yes' was analyzed, and 5 items on the Likert Scale for life satisfaction answered 'satisfied' and 'very satisfied' were re-coded and analyzed for data analysis. Additionally, the association between suicidal ideation and life satisfaction was measured by correlation matrix and binomial logistic regression analysis.

Results: Data analysis reveals that 6.4 percent of the total respondents answered to have suicidal ideation after the age of 60. Among them, 7.7 percent of the widowed elders responded to have suicidal ideation, which is 1.8 percent-point higher than not-widowed elders(p<.001). Furthermore, after adjusting covariates, widowed older adults demonstrated to have a higher risk of suicidal ideation(odds ratio [OR] 1.27, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.04-1.56), and lower life satisfaction (OR 0.70, CI 0.60-0.82) than not-widowed older adults. The results portray a significant difference in the characteristics of the subjects and reasons for suicidal ideation between the widowed and not-widowed.

Conclusion and Implications: This research provides insights for improvements by finding the significance of the influence of spousal loss on older adults' life satisfaction and suicide ideation, and the correlation between the two variables of the widowed elders. This study provides further susceptible researches sophisticated information about the widowed elders in South Korea. Furthermore, it is expected to build logical evidence and to form a stepping stone for social programs and policies regarding elderly bereavement in South Korea.