Browsing by Author "Dunkel, Elias"

Objective. Depression can affect the elderly just as it can affect people of working age. However, depression has been shown to manifest differently in the elderly compared to people of other ages, and diagnosing depression in elderly patients isn’t always as straightforward, as it might be for other populations. In addition, research on depression of the elderly lags behind that of others, which makes the structures and quality of depression in the elderly an important subject of study. Network theory provides a novel way of conceptualizing mental health problems. Mental disorders are no longer seen to be caused by a latent factor, such as a disease, but rather, mental disorders are conceptualized as causal relations of the symptoms of the disorder. Thus, network theory provides a basis for identifying relevant causal symptoms of different disorders in different populations as potential targets for interventions. So far, the structures of symptom networks of depression have been studied with clinical populations of working aged adults. This study aims to uncover, if there are initial structural differences in the depression networks of elderly patients whose depressive symptoms have persisted or remitted over a three-year follow-up. Methods. The sample of this study was part of the Survey of Health and Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) research project. The sample consisted of 14,084 over 50-year-old Europeans, whose score on the EURO-D depression scale was over the limit of observable depression on their first time filling the questionnaire. The sample was then split into two groups based on if their depression had either persisted (n = 7770) or remitted (n = 6314) over a three-year follow-up. Comparative network analysis was then performed on the networks of depressive symptoms from the first time the subjects filled the questionnaire. Results and conclusions. The symptom networks of people with persisting depression had stronger and structurally different connections between symptoms than those of people whose depression had remitted. This finding was in line with the network theory of mental disorders, as well as prior research findings. Contrary to prior findings, controlling for the severity of depression nullified the differences of strength between the symptom networks of the two groups. This finding may indicate, that contrary to clinically depressed populations of working ages, the depression networks of the elderly do not exhibit structures that would, despite of the severity of depression, predict the persistence of depression over a three-year follow-up.