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Introduction
Depression is a common disorder in late life. Distribution of gender and age in the occurrence of depression varies among studies depending on the sample studied, measurement and methods used. Symptom scale-based studies of depression show an increasing rate of depression with age, and significantly higher prevalence in the oldest old (Stordal et al., 2001; Bergdahl et al., 2005). The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) are symptom scales that are often used (Stordal et al., 2001; Heikkinen and Kauppinen, 2004; van't Veer-Tazelaar et al., 2008). At the same time, epidemiological studies based on structured interviews with standard diagnostic criteria show a continuously decreasing prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) with age (Scott et al., 2008; Kessler et al., 2010). Different manifestation of depression with age has been suggested as a possible explanation for this contrast between symptom scale-based studies and studies using diagnostic interviews (Newmann et al., 1996; Jorm, 2000).
Studies focusing on temporal trends of depression have shown cohort effects in prevalence of depression. The results vary, but the main conclusion is an increasing incidence and prevalence of depression in more recent birth cohorts (Wickramaratne et al., 1989; Klerman and Weissmann, 1989; Lewinsohn et al., 1993). Specifically, there appears to be an increase in risk of depression among birth cohorts who came to maturity after World War II (Wickramaratne et al., 1989). Most of these studies have used diagnostic interviews (Wickramaratne et al., 1989; Lewinson et al., 1993).
Depression has consequences for well-being, daily function, onset and prognosis of physical illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, and mortality, and is associated with high economic burden (Wells et al., 1989; Penninx et al., 1999; Bremmer et al., 2006; Luppa et al., 2007). This makes diagnosing and treatment of depression important, particularly since the treatment of depression in late life has shown good results (Schulberg et al., 1998). Despite this, depression often goes undiagnosed (Birrer and Vemuri, 2004) and untreated (Cole et al., 1999).
With the elderly population growing worldwide, depression is becoming an increasing health problem. Knowledge about the developmental trends of...