Symptoms of depression in the oldest old: A longitudinal study

This study examined depressive symptoms in a population-based. longitudinal sample of people aged 80 and older to determine initial prevalence of depr essive symptoms and changes over time. Depressive symptomatology was assess ed with the Center fur Epidemiologic Studies-Depression scale (CES-D). The sample was drawn from the OCTO-Twin study. which examined 702 Swedish twins over age 80 in which both members of the pair were still surviving. For th e present study, one member of each twin pair was randomly selected, result ing in a sample of 351, A comprehensive biobehavioral assessment was conduc ted at three time points over 4 years. Depressive symptoms were initially r elatively low and decreased significantly between Wave 1 and Wave 2, At Wav e 3, depressive symptoms increased slightly but not significantly. Particip ants who received a dementia diagnosis at some point in the study did not d iffer significantly on initial CES-D scores when compared to those particip ants who never received such a diagnosis. Lack of well-being, as opposed to negative affect, was the biggest contributor to the overall depression sco re at each of the three waves of measurement. Predictors of negative affect for this sample included activities of daily living, subjective health, an d performance on the cognitive test, block design. None of these predictors were significant for lack of well-being.