The association of anxiety and depressive symptoms with cognitive performance in community-dwelling older adults.

Abstract

We examined the association of anxiety, depressive symptoms, and their co-occurrence on cognitive processes in 102 community-dwelling older adults. Participants completed anxiety and depression questionnaires, and measures of episodic and semantic memory, word fluency, processing speed/shifting attention, and inhibition. Participants with only increased anxiety had poorer processing speed/shifting attention, and inhibition, but depressive symptoms alone were not associated with any cognitive deficits. Although co-existing anxiety and depressive symptoms was associated with deficits in 3 cognitive domains, reductions in inhibition were solely attributed to anxiety. Findings suggest an excess cognitive load on inhibitory ability in normal older adults reporting mild anxiety.

Interventions for generalized anxiety disorder in older adults: Systematic review and meta-analysis

“…At an individual level, anxiety symptoms and disorders have been found to be associated with increased sleep disturbance (Brenes et al, 2009), intake of anxiety related medication (Gonç alves, Pachana, & Byrne, 2011), disability (Brenes et al, 2005), mortality (Ostir & Goodwin, 2006), and decreased cognitive functioning (Beaudreau & O'Hara, 2009;Mantella et al, 2007). At a societal level, late-life anxiety was related to increased use of health services, namely longer appointments with physicians (Stanley, Roberts, Bourland, & Novy, 2001), and inability to perform daily functions (Trollor, Anderson, Sachdev, Brodaty, & Andrews, 2007).…”

Anxiety in old age and dementia - implications for clinical and research practice

“…Anxiety in general is associated with decreased cognitive functioning in older adulthood and increased risk of cognitive decline [35,36,51,62,[72][73][74][75][76]. Although there is some evidence of decreased performance in some components of cognition, including processing vision, attention, inhibition, sleep, health and depression…”

“…Rather surprisingly, given the relative lack of research in this area [43,47], sub-syndromal anxiety symptoms appear more widespread than anxiety disorders [12], with prevalence ranging from 15% to 52.3% [10]. Furthermore, irrespective Anxiety in old age and dementia -implications for clinical and research practice speed, attention shifting and inhibition in subsyndromal anxiety [72] in older adults, the majority of studies, especially those related to memory and executive function, have tended to include clinical samples, i.e., individuals meeting full diagnostic criteria for anxiety disorders or with comorbid anxiety and depressive disorders [12]. Arguably, this approach is at odds with the known high prevalence of sub-syndromal anxiety [12,76].…”

“…Arguably therefore, improvement in health and wellbeing in older adulthood may be attained by raising awareness of the potential detrimental effects of anxiety in this age group and of the benefits of diagnosis and treatment [66,67]. Lack of appreciation of the potential influence of anxiety is especially pertinent in relation to the clinical assessment, characterization, diagnosis and follow-up of mild cognitive impairment and dementia in older adults [2,45,[68][69][70][71][72], especially when one considers that anxiety can be amenable to treatment [12] and that the physiological response to anxiety may also detrimentally influence cognitive function over time [42,51,73,74].…”

Cognitive Effects of Late Life Depression: Review of Neuropsychological Findings

“…This leads to interrupts in the processes leading up to memory formations, with shallow encoding of events, and lesser formation of enduring memories [21] [57]. Since processing speed is one function that naturally is showed in aging, memory deficits as a consequence of depression tend to be even more severe in elderly, due to even shallower encoding of new events [57] [58]. Episodic memory impairment in depression is associated with shallow encoding and poorer effortful control of encoded information [59].…”