Abstract
Background/Objectives: With the gradual acceleration of population aging in China, the health problems among middle-aged and older adults have become a key social topic. Among this segment of the population, symptoms of depression are common, and cancer has the potential to aggravate such psychological diseases. Under this background, the present study investigates depression in middle-aged and older cancer patients and the various factors that influence depression. Methods: Data from 356 participants (aged ≥ 45, cancer-diagnosed, CES-D score ≥ 10) were extracted from CHARLS 2020. Depressive symptoms were assessed using CES-D, with SPSS 29.0 employed for ANOVA and binary logistic regression to identify associations between cancer, covariates, and depression. Results: The number of depressive symptoms was 161 (45.2%). Binary logistic regression showed that "gender", "retired status", "social status", "life satisfaction", "self-rated health", and "sleep duration" were the main factors. "Female", "not retired", "unsocialized", "satisfied", "very poor self-rated health", and "sleep < 6 h" were found to exacerbate depressive symptoms in middle-aged and older cancer patients. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms are more severe in middle-aged and older cancer patients than in other groups and are influenced by various factors. Consequently, greater attention should be paid to the mental health of these patients in their daily lives, and targeted measures should be taken to improve their mental health considering all aspects of family and society. These measures may alleviate the psychological harm that these patients suffer in the process of cancer and its treatment.