FROM THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF GERIATRIC PSYCHIATRY
Older adults with depression who reported experiencing child abuse were more likely to have persistent disease at follow-up than those who did not, according to a study carried out by Ilse Wielaard and associates at the VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
The mean age of the 282 study participants included in the 2-year study was 70.6 years, and of this group, 152 patients reported a history of child abuse. Patients with a history of child abuse were significantly more likely to be depressed at the end of the 2-year follow-up period.
Depression severity was the most significant mediator of the relationship between childhood abuse and depression, followed by neuroticism, age at onset of depression, loneliness, and number of chronic diseases.
“In the treatment of late-life depression it is important to detect childhood abuse and to consider mediating characteristics that influence its course negatively,” the investigators concluded.
Find the full study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry ( doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2017.01.014 ).
