Productive Engagement Patterns and Their Role in Self-Compassion and Interpersonal Depressive Symptoms in Late Adulthood

Background and Goal: Population aging is a global problem owing to lower fertility and increased life expectancy, but the Hong Kong population will age rapidly in the next two decades, even faster than in other industrialized nations such as Japan (Wong & Yeung, 2019). Hence, productive aging initiatives engage the elderly to play a more active part in society. People's monetary and non-monetary contributions to their families and society are referred to as productive engagement (Morrow-Howell & Wang, 2013). It is typically operationalized in practice via work, volunteering, and caring, all of which have monetary worth. According to some research, lifelong education is a also financially beneficial strategy (Bass & Caro, 1996). Additionally, since Asian cultures are frequently family-centered, numerous Asian academics investigate larger family dynamics in their studies, such as housekeeping assistance for children and care for grandchildren (Liu et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2019). Meaningful social responsibilities provide purpose and alleviate loneliness, while self-compassion helps people cope with age-related mental health problems and enhances their well-being. Cultural differences in collectivist societies influence depression manifestation, highlighting the importance of interpersonal depression manifestation. This research hence looks at productive engagement patterns among Hong Kong's elderly and their connections with self-compassion and interpersonal depression symptoms.

The study is cross-sectional and quantitative in design. With informed consent, 807 Hong Kong people aged 55 and above answered questionnaires on productive engagement, Self-Compassion Scale (SCS), and Multidimensional Depression Assessment Scale (MDAS) (MDAS). Data analysis: To establish patterns of productive engagement, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was employed, and One-way ANCOVA analyses controlled for demographic characteristics to investigate correlations between self-compassion and depressive symptoms across productive engagement groups. The SPSS PROCESS macro was used to investigate the moderating role of productive engagement in the relationship between self-compassion and interpersonal symptoms of depression.

Results: Four productive engagement patterns emerged: Low activity (43.4%), Volunteering/Learning/Support to spouse (6.6%), Support to spouse & children (33.0%), and Employed/Support to spouse & children (17.1%). It indicates a heightened need to engage the elderly in a more productive lifestyle. Although having the greatest self-compassion ratings, the category "Volunteering/Learning/Support to Spouse" is also the smallest, demonstrating how the Chinese elderly's primary task is to care for their family. With the exception of the Volunteering/Learning/Support to Spouse group, productive engagement moderated the relationship between self-compassion and interpersonal depressive symptoms. Compassion-based mental health interventions have the ability to relieve interpersonal symptoms of depression in all other three categories. Implications: This is the first study to capture the pattern of productive engagement among Hong Kong's elderly, and it can be extrapolated to Asian populations in other locations. It would promote a better knowledge of the Chinese elderly's retirement lifestyle and emphasize the need of developing self-compassion and engagement among seniors in order to enhance their mental health and well-being. Since self-criticism is a major concern among the elderly (Allen and Leary, 2014), the research emphasizes the need of self-compassion in developing mental health programs for the elderly.