Depressive Symptoms, Depletion, or Developmental Change? Withdrawal, Apathy, and Lack of Vigor in the Geriatric Depression Scale

Abstract

High endorsement rates for the items in WAV and its bivariate correlations with age and health problems suggest WAV may be congruent with disengagement or depletion and may lead to over-identification of depression in older adults. Interpretation of the GDS and similar measures may be improved by use of subscale scores and consideration of age and health status of the respondent.

Validade da escala de depressão do Center for Epidemiological Studies entre idosos brasileiros

“…Just as it is said that CES-D applied to all elderly presents infl ated score because of the presence of somatic items in the scale, it is also believed that part of the items of GDS concern adaptive changes of ageing and not to depression in itself. 1 These indications are enough to indicate criterions use of these scales in population studies and, on the other hand, suggest the conduction of cross-sectional studies and longitudinal studies comparing different population of elderly and non-elderly with and without somatic diseases.…”

Factor Structure of the Geriatric Depression Scale and Relationships with Cognition and Function in Alzheimer’s Disease

“…However, these syndromes are particularly difficult to diagnose in older adults with AD and may be difficult to differentiate from one another. First, depression must be distinguished from somatic illness and normal correlates of the aging process [28]. Apathy must be distinguished from depression and loss of ability in the context of AD [4,5].…”

“…To that end, its creators used a yes/no format to eliminate confusion potentially caused by Likert-scale response options. The GDS also eliminated questions regarding somatic symptoms due to the fact that comorbid medical conditions or normal aging may be responsible for somatic complaints in a geriatric population [28]. With these purposeful changes, the GDS has been shown to be reliable, sensitive, and specific, even in the presence of mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment [34][35][36][37].…”

“…With these purposeful changes, the GDS has been shown to be reliable, sensitive, and specific, even in the presence of mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment [34][35][36][37]. The purposeful design and demonstrated reliability, internal consistency [28,33,35], and validity [38][39][40] of the GDS have helped it to gain prominence in clinical practice and gerontology research [41]. Given the popularity of the GDS in research and clinical practice, the present study sought to determine whether the GDS could be used to identify both apathy and depression in patients with probable AD.…”

“…depression), rather than a cognitive one. Adams [28] actually excluded participants with dementia. Finally, Hall and Davis [42] included subjects with cognitive impairment and effectively described the cognitive characteristics of their sample.…”