Health status and risk for depression among the elderly: a meta-analysis of published literature
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Open Access
- 10 November 2009
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in Age and Ageing
- Vol. 39 (1), 23-30
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afp187
Abstract
Objective: the goal of this study was to determine the relationship between health status, including self-rated health status and chronic disease, and risk for depression among the elderly. Method: MEDLINE, EMBASE and The Cochrane Library Database were used to identify potential studies. The studies were classified into cross-sectional and longitudinal subsets. For each study, the numbers of the total participants, cases (for cross-sectional study) or incident cases (for longitudinal study) of depression in each health status group were extracted and entered into Review Manager 4.2. The quantitative meta-analysis of cross-sectional studies and that of longitudinal studies were performed, respectively. For prevalence and incidence rates of depression, odds risk and relative risk (RR) were calculated, respectively. Results: the quantitative meta-analysis showed that, compared with the elderly without chronic disease, those with chronic disease had higher risk for depression (RR: 1.53, 95% confidence intervals (CI): 1.20–1.97). Compared with the elderly with good self-rated health, those with poor self-rated health had higher risk for depression (RR: 2.40, 95% CI: 1.94–2.97). Conclusions: despite the methodological limitations of this meta-analysis, both poor self-rated health status and the presence of chronic disease are risk factors for depression among the elderly. In the elderly, poor self-reported health status appears to be more strongly associated with depression than the presence of chronic disease.Keywords
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