However, despite these limitations an association between life events and change of depressive symptoms was found.
The strength of our study included access to a large cohort of non clinical elderly from the community. It allowed sufficient
statistical power to examine the association between depressive symptoms and life events. Although a more stringent diagnostic instrument including clinical interviews was not performed to diagnose depression, the use of GDS provided a
reliable and valid screen for the presence of depressive symptoms in the elderly. Depressive symptoms were assessed at
two time points using a standardized instrument found to have good sensitivity and specificity, and validated in the
Chinese elderly. This made possible misclassification for those who were depressed less likely. A range of health status variables were available to control for confounding factors.