Documentation of Affective Functioning Measures in the Health and Retirement Study

This paper documents the HRS measures of mental health status, also called affective functioning. It is intended for a wide range of users, particularly those who would like to include mental health in their research but are not familiar with the measures available in the HRS. It also addresses topics of interest to mental health specialists who are concerned with how the abbreviated scales in the HRS correspond to the full scales used in the existing literature. This paper provides users with an overview of the measures included in the study, including their origins and pedigree. It details the specific steps used to create standard summary variables for the scales measuring depressive symptoms and major depressive episodes, and includes SAS code for this variable creation in a Technical Appendix.