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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Researchers have revealed certain factors that can help identify elderly individuals with the greatest risk for developing major depression.
The study involved more than 600 people ages 65 and older. Of those people, 5.3 percent developed a major depression episode in the four-year time they were evaluated.
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Those with low-level depression symptoms who feel they don't have strong social support from other people, and those with a past history of depression were at particularly high risk of developing the mental condition within one to four years.
Preventive treatments of high-risk group may be the most cost effective and health beneficial option, the researchers said.
"Given the complications of depression in an elderly population, a preventive approach for this at-risk population may be quite important to not only prevent psychological suffering but to also avoid the deleterious effects of depression on comorbid medical illness," Warren D. Taylor, M.D., an associate professor of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., was quoted as saying.
Source: The American Journal of Psychiatry, December 2009
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