Symptoms of depression among community-dwelling elderly African-American and White older adults

Background. Few studies have explored the variance in individual symptoms b y race in older adults. Methods. Data were analysed from the Duke site of the Established Populatio ns for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE), a community sample of persons 65 years-of-age and older, 54 % of whom were African-Americans. Of the 3401 subjects with adequate data on depressive symptomatology, confirma tory factor analysis and LISREL were first used to confirm the presence of the factor structure previously reported for the CES-D. Next, bivariate ana lysis was performed to determine the prevalence of individual symptoms by r ace. Finally, LISREL analysis was performed to control for potential confou nding variables. Results. When bivariate comparisons of specific symptoms by race were explo red, African-Americans were more likely to report less hope about the futur e, poor appetite, difficulty concentrating, requiring more effort for usual activities, less talking, feeling people were unfriendly, feeling disliked by others and being more 'bothered' than usual. When LISREL analyses were applied to these data (controlling for education, income, cognitive impairm ent, chronic health problems and disability and other factors) racial diffe rences in somatic complaints and life satisfaction disappeared, yet differe nces in interpersonal relations persisted. Conclusions. This study confirms earlier findings of minimal overall differ ences in symptom frequency between African-American and non-African-America n community-dwelling older adults in controlled studies.