Somatic symptoms and depressive symptoms among older adult Korean immigrants

Given the lack of understanding of how Korean immigrants express depressive symptoms, the purpose of this descriptive correlational study was to describe somatic symptoms and depressive symptoms and examine the relationship between them, as reported by older adult Korean immigrants. Purposive sampling was used in this study of 160 older adult (ages 65 to 91) Korean immigrants. Most of these participants immigrated to the United States at an older age. They reported a high level of depressive symptoms, and these symptoms were closely associated with somatic symptoms, a finding that coincides with previous studies differentiating Korean individuals from individuals of other cultures. The findings from this study highlight the need for health care providers to be aware of and recognize cultural differences in how patients express depressive symptoms somatically when assessing and treating depression within the older adult Korean immigrant population.