What is late-life depression and how common is it?
Late-life depression generally occurs in people >60 years of age and can present as late-onset or recurrent depression. Older patients appear to have lower rates of depression than younger patients. The Epidemiologic Catchment Area study2 first reported that finding years ago, debunking the assumption that older people might have a higher risk of depression. In the National Comorbidity Study, Kessler and colleagues3 also found that the risk of depression in older individuals was actually less than that in mixed-age samples. In the younger samples, the odds ratio showed approximately a two-fold increased risk of depression. It has been suggested that this data points to a cohort effect; patients born more recently are showing higher rates of depression at a young age, whereas the group that is currently elderly represents a generation in which frequency of depression was reduced. That may not be the only explanation, but overall, older patients appear to have a lower rate of depression.
