Depressive Symptoms of Whites and African Americans Aged 60 Years and Older

Are higher rates of depression in women accounted for by differential symptom reporting?

“…For example, the coefficients shown in Table 4 indicate that persons with a highschool education or beyond, married persons, and those currently working had lower levels of depression (significantly negative coefficients). Increasing age and self-identified ethnicity as non-white were associated with lower levels of latent trait depression, consistent with similar analyses employing the ECA data (Gallo et al 1994(Gallo et al ,1998.…”

“…Prior studies from the Baltimore ECA have reported one-year prevalence estimates for affective disorders among women of 5% and among men of 2.3% (Robins and Regier 1991), but no previous study from the ECA has investigated gender differences in symptoms reported that might account for differences in rates. In the Subjects and methods section, we discuss a model that has been applied to similar problems to compare symptoms of depression according to age (Gallo et al 1994; Gallo et al 1999), ethnicity (Gallo et al 1998), and health services setting (Suh and Gallo 1997), to examine responses to the Mini-Mental State Examination for bias according to level of educational attainment (Jones 1997), and to examine differential item functioning in responses to activities of daily living/instrumental activities of daily living tasks according to age and gender (Fleishman et al 2002).…”

Profiles of depressive symptoms among African Americans and Caribbean Blacks

“…Although most investigations report more depressive symptoms among Blacks as compared to whites (Jackson, 1997;Myers, Lesser, Rodriguez et al, 2002), a few report no racial differences (Gallo, Cooper-Patrick, & Lesikar, 1998;Husaini, Castor, Linn et al, 1990). Despite the suggestion that socioeconomic status may explain these differences (Frerichs, Aneshensel, & Clark, 1981;Riolo et al, 2005), other studies find race differences even after controlling for SES (Zhang & Snowden, 1999).…”

Late-Life Depression Among Black and White Elderly Homecare Patients

“…For example, it has been suggested that older black adults report more somatic complaints than older white adults; 6 however, these results are not consistently observed across studies. 4,7 Elderly whites have been found to report more dysphoria and anhedonia than their black counterparts in some, 7,8 but not other studies. 4 One explanation for these seemingly contradictory results is that the relative distribution of key factors that may influence the prevalence of depression differs across racial groups.…”

“…6,[9][10][11] Similarly, most evidence suggests that sociodemographic factors, such as income, education, and marital status also influence late-life depression among older black and white adults. [4][5][6][7] Commonly observed racial variation in the prevalence of these sociodemographic factors in different types of samples may result in differential risk for depression. 3 Home health care provides nursing services in the homes of patients who are too medically ill or disabled to leave the home without assistance.…”