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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Comorbidity and risk-patterns of depression, generalised anxiety disorder and mixed anxiety-depression in later life
— results from the AMSTEL study | | Author(s) | R A Schoevers, A F Beekman, D J H Deeg |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 18, no 11, November 2003 |
| Pages | pp 994-1001 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Anxiety ; Living in the community ; Correlation ; Netherlands. |
| Annotation | Depression and generalised anxiety disorder frequently overlap. The question remains unresolved whether these are specific disorders, or whether they represent different dimensions of a single disorder. GMS-AGECAT diagnoses were obtained for 4051 community-living older people from the Amsterdam Study of the Elderly (AMSTEL). Comorbidity was studied along a severity gradient for men and women separately. The prevalence of pure depression was 12.2%, pure generalised anxiety 2.9%, and mixed anxiety-depression 1.8%. Comorbidity increased with higher severity levels of both depression and generalised anxiety. Comorbidity was twice as likely in women than in men. Different risk profiles for diagnostic categories were not demonstrated for concurrent risk factors. Longstanding vulnerability was significantly stronger with mixed anxiety-depression than with pure anxiety and pure depression. Mixed anxiety-depression was over-represented in women. Both lines of investigation suggest that, in older people, a dimensional classification is more appropriate than a categorical classification of depression and generalised anxiety. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-031217209 A |
| Classmark | ENR: ENP: K4: 49: 76H |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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