The British Journal of Psychiatry 150: 463-470 (1987)
© 1987 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
The structure of depressive symptoms in the elderly
WR Good, I Vlachonikolis, P Griffiths and RA Griffiths
Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford.
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.