The purpose of this study was to examine the coping styles of depressed elderly people and the
mediation effect of their coping styles on the quality of life. The subjects in this study were the elderly
people who participated in programs provided by a senior welfare center and/or used a senior center called
Gyungrodang in the city of Busan. After a survey was conducted, the answer sheets from 385 respondents
were analyzed. The major findings of the study were as follows: First, they suffered severe depression, and
their depression was under the influence of their age, form of residence, presence or absence of spouse,
religion, academic credential, self-rated economic status and presence or absence of diseases. Second, the
elderly people who suffered depression led a lower quality of life. Third, the problem-centered coping had
a partial effect on the relationship between depression and the quality of life, and the emotion-centered
coping had no mediation effect on the relationship between depression and the quality of life. Fourth,
there was improvement in the quality of life of the depressed elderly people when they made use of the
problem-centered coping method, and their quality of life got lower when they made use of the emotioncentered
coping method. Therefore how to prevent and cure depression that lowers the quality of life of
the elderly should carefully be devised, and in which way they could cope with depression in an
appropriate way should be studied as well.