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Mood and Anxiety Disorders Affect Many Older Adults

Rates of mood and anxiety disorders appear to decline with age but the conditions remain common in older adults, especially women, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

“Knowledge of the prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders and coexisting mood-anxiety disorder in older community-dwelling adults is important; these are hidden and undertreated but treatable disorders associated with poor health outcomes,” the authors wrote.

Amy L. Byers, PhD, MPH, of the University of California, San Francisco, and San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and colleagues determined nationally representative estimates of mood, anxiety, and combined mood and anxiety disorders using a sample of 2,575 survey participants aged 55 and older. Of these, 43% were aged 55 to 64; 32% aged 65 to 74; 20% aged 75 to 84; and 5% aged 85 or older.

A total of 5% of participants had a mood disorder, including major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, within the previous year. Rates of anxiety disorders—such as panic disorder, agoraphobia, other phobias, generalized anxiety disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder—were 12% overall. About 3% had co-occurring mood and anxiety disorders.

Prevalence of all the conditions declined with age. When comparing persons aged 55 to 64 with those age 85 and older, 7.6% vs. 2.4% had mood disorders, 16.6% vs. 8.1% had anxiety disorders, and 4.8% vs. 0% had both conditions.

Women were more likely to have any of the disorders than men; 6.4% of women and 3% of men had mood disorders, 14.7% of women and 7.6% of men had anxiety disorders, and 3.7% of women and 1.6% of men had both.

“Given the rapid aging of the U.S. population, the potential public health burden of late-life mental health disorders will likely grow as well, suggesting the importance of continued epidemiologic monitoring of the mental health status of the young-old, mid-old, old-old and oldest-old cohorts,” they concluded.

— Source: American Medical Association