ASSOCIATION BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT IN AGED MALE WAR VETERANS

This study examined the association between both depressive symptoms a nd depressive disorder and subsequent cognitive performance and incide nt dementia. Participants were selected randomly from male veterans of World War II living in Sydney, Australia in 1982 (n = 342). Those sur viving were interviewed again in 1991 (12 = 209). Depressive disorder and dementia were diagnosed clinically. Depressive symptoms were asses sed by a standard self-completed scale. Cognitive performance was asse ssed by 18 standard neuropsychological tests representing a range of m ental functions. There was essentially no predictive and no concurrent association between depressive disorder and cognitive performance. Th ere was a marginal correlation between depressive disorder in 1982 and dementia in 1991 but no concurrent association in 1991. Initially, de pressive symptoms appeared to be associated with cognitive impairment, both predictively and concurrently. However when verbal intelligence was controlled, the predictive association disappeared for all but two cognitive performance tests and the concurrent association weakened d istinctly across all tests. We concluded that cognitive performance an d incident dementia were not predicted by depressive disorder nor by d epressive symptoms after adjusting for the effect of intelligence.