The estimated rate of depressed mood in US adults: recent evidence for a peak in later life

Objective: The main aim of this study is to add new evidence on the descrip tive epidemiology of depressed mood, and to investigate suspected determina nts for depressed mood in adulthood. Methods: The data are from a continuin g survey of a nationally representative sample of adult household residents in the United States, conducted in 1995 and 1996, totaling 26,883 responde nts. Multiple logistic regression procedures yielded estimated associations . Results: We found that an estimated 1.9% of adult females and 1.0% of adu lt males experience a spell of sustained depressed mood during a span of si milar to2 weeks duration (i.e. point prevalence). For most of these cases, this is not the first spell. Among women, the smoothed curve for the preval ence estimates shows a peak in the youngest age stratum and decreases acros s age strata before 60 years, and has a slight secondary peak thereafter. I n contrast, for males, the prevalence estimates of depression show no peak in the older age strata. Evidence from logistic regression analyses support s the inference of this later life peak in frequency of depressed mood amon g women. These new findings add to a growing body of epidemiological eviden ce on age and depression, and provoke new questions about the possibly etio logical relationships involving social structural characteristics of local neighborhoods in combination with individual-level risk factors that have r eceived primary attention in recent psychiatric epidemiology. Conclusions: These findings point to the need for further etiological research, includin g studies of relationships between social structural characteristics of loc al neighborhoods and the occurrence of spells of depressed mood, as well as clinical implications for depression mood in late life. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.