The Structure of Depressive Symptoms in the Elderly

In a structured sample of 100 male and 100 female minimally impaired patients, aged 60 years and over, females were more depressed. Varimax factor analysis demonstrated four factor groupings which have clinical relevance - Depression, Anxiety, Cognitive impairment, and Psychosomatic disorder; their relative importance is different in males and females. Analysis of variance of the scores of clusters generated by cluster analysis demonstrated four groups of subjects - normal, mildly depressed, moderately depressed with borderline dementia and disability, and severely depressed with moderate dementia and frank disability. In the mildly and moderately depressed, symptoms of anxiety predominated.