High Occurrence of Mood and Anxiety Disorders Among Older Adults

Abstract

Context Little is known about prevalence rates of DSM-IV disorders across age strata of older adults, including common conditions such as individual and coexisting mood and anxiety disorders. Objective To determine nationally representative estimates of 12-month prevalence rates of mood, anxiety, and comorbid mood-anxiety disorder across young-old, mid-old, old-old, and oldest old community-dwelling adults. Design and Setting The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) is a population-based probability sample of 9282 participants 18 years and older, conducted between February 2001 and April 2003. The NCS-R survey used the fully structured World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview. Participants We studied the 2575 participants 55 years and older who were part of NCS-R (43% 55-64; 32% 65-74; 20% 75-84; 5% ≥85 years). This included only non-institutionalized adults, as all NCS-R participants resided in households within the community. Main Outcome Measures Twelve-month prevalence of mood disorders (MDD, dysthymia, bipolar disorder), anxiety disorders (panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder), and coexisting mood-anxiety disorder were assessed using DSM-IV criteria. Prevalence rates were weighted to adjust for the complex design in order to infer generalizability to the U.S. population. Results The likelihood of having a mood, anxiety, or combined mood-anxiety disorder generally showed a pattern of decline with age (P < .05). Twelve-month disorders showed higher rates in women compared to men; a statistically significant trend with age. In addition, anxiety disorders were as high if not higher than mood disorders across age groups (overall 12-month rates: mood=5% and anxiety=12%). No differences were found between race/ethnicity groups. Conclusions Prevalence rates of DSM-IV mood and anxiety disorders in late life tend to decline with age, but remain very common; especially in women. These results highlight the need for intervention and prevention strategies.

Implementation of a brief anxiety assessment and evaluation in a Department of Veterans Affairs geriatric primary care clinic

“…Among older adults, anxiety and depression often cooccur [22]. The finding of a large association of GAI and GDS-15 scores aligns with findings of a high degree of comorbidity of anxiety and depression in older adults, although this may raise concerns regarding value added for anxiety assessment.…”

“…Here, we report on the feasibility and process of implementing the GAI, the acceptability of the measure to VA patients and staff, and the prevalence of anxiety in this clinic using GAI scores. We also compared the GAI with the 15-item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) [21], since depression and anxiety are often comorbid [22]. The GDS-15 is used in our geriatrics clinic to assess depression in addition to the two-item Patient's Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2), an annual depression screen in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).…”

Phobic Anxiety and Cognitive Performance Over 4 Years Among Community-Dwelling Older Women in the Nurses' Health Study

“…We conducted a key secondary analysis additionally accounting for depression status: depression is an important factor to examine due to the known high degree of comorbidity of anxiety with depression, including among older women(30). Although it is difficult to know whether depression was coincident or subsequent to anxiety in our participants, mediation is likely the key pattern to address, given the relation between anxiety and development of depression; thus, we focused on depression as of initial cognitive assessment.…”

Effects of 900MHz radiofrequency on corticosterone, emotional memory and neuroinflammation in middle-aged rats

“…Human middle-age (40 to 65 years old) is characterized by the occurrence of early signs of ageing, such as mood disorders and declarative memory decrease (Byers et al, 2010).…”

“…Regarding behavioral performances, the assessment of age-related decline (as memory) is hampered in late ageing subjects, as it overlaps with senescence-linked disabilities (such as apathy, sleep disorders, modified locomotor activity) that lead to important interindividual variability (Bilbo, 2010;Byers et al, 2010;Hodes and Shors, 2007;Moretti et al, 2011). Therefore, middle-aged models' assets are displaying less intra-group variability, then, requiring fewer experimental subjects (Moyer and Brown, 2006), and mitigating ageingrelated biases in behavioral approaches (such as differences in locomotor activity) (Pesic et al, 2010).…”