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Anxiety in Geriatric Depression

Effects of Age and Cognitive Impairment

From Cornell University Medical College, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, White Plains, NY 10605. Address reprint requests to Dr. Alexopoulos, The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, Westchester Division, 21 Bloomingdale Rd., White Plains, NY 10605.

The authors investigated the occurrence of anxiety symptomatology in a clinical sample of geriatric depressed patients and examined the effect of age and cognitive impairment on the experience of anxiety symptoms. Subjects were psychiatric patients consecutively admitted to a longitudinal study of geriatric depression. Severity of depression, antidepressant treatment, cognitive impairment, medical illness, social support, and physical environment were systematically assessed at entry and approximately every 6 months afterwards. Symptoms of anxiety and phobic anxiety were similar in older (n = 52) and younger (n = 15) subjects, although older subjects had significantly lower scores of subjectively experienced depression, interpersonal sensitivity, anger, hostility, and psychoticism. Older depressed patients with cognitive impairment corresponding to mild or moderate dementia had less anxiety than geriatric depressed patients without dementia. Findings of this study suggest the absence of an age effect on the expression of anxiety during depressive states. Although there is no age effect on anxiety, mild-to-moderate dementia appears to be associated with lower anxiety.

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