Background: Both the quality of sleep and depression impact short-term memory (STM) while they influence each other. However, the underlying mechanisms are not yet clear. Herein, we aimed to explore the mediating effect of depression between sleep quality and STM in older adults and further test the gender differences in this relationship.
Methods: A cluster sampling survey was carried out among 903 residents that were aged 60+ years in a semi-closed island of Xiamen, China, in 2019. The subjects' sleep quality and depression were measured using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15), respectively. The three-item recall test was utilized to measure STM function. Mediation analyses were performed using the structural equation model and bias-corrected bootstrap method. Next, the Wald-test was utilized to determine gender differences in the pathway.
Results: Overall, 355 men and 508 women, with a mean age of 69.55 and 70.97, respectively, had valid data on the main variables. Depression was found to mediate the effect of sleep quality on STM (a*b = -0.076, p < 0.05). Interestingly, while this indirect effect existed in the female group (af *bf = -0.126, p < 0.05), it did not in the male group (am *bm = 0.017, p = 0.677). The Wald-test indicated no gender differences in the pathway from sleep quality to depression (p = 0.303). However, the pathway from depression to STM function was found to be significantly stronger for females than males (p = 0.0198).
Conclusion: Higher sleep quality was found to be associated with improved STM function. Furthermore, the association was found to be regulate indirectly by lower depressive symptoms for females, but directly for males. Therefore, appropriate psychological interventions may be beneficial to the maintenance of STM for older adults, particularly for women.
Keywords: depression; gender differences; mediation; older adults; short-term memory; sleep quality.
© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.