High Occurrence of Mood and Anxiety Disorders Among Older Adults

Context

Little is known about prevalence rates ofDSM-IVdisorders across age strata of older adults, including common conditions such as individual and coexisting mood and anxiety disorders.

Objective

To determine nationally representative estimates of 12-month prevalence rates of mood, anxiety, and comorbid mood-anxiety disorders across young-old, mid-old, old-old, and oldest-old community-dwelling adults.

Design

The National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R) is a population-based probability sample of 9282 participants 18 years and older, conducted between February 2001 and April 2003. The NCS-R survey used the fully structured World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview.

Setting

Continental United States.

Participants

We studied the 2575 participants 55 years and older who were part of NCS-R (43%, 55-64 years; 32%, 65-74 years; 20%, 75-84 years; 5%, ≥85 years). This included only noninstitutionalized adults, as all NCS-R participants resided in households within the community.

Main Outcome Measures

Twelve-month prevalence of mood disorders (major depressive disorder, dysthymia, bipolar disorder), anxiety disorders (panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder), and coexisting mood-anxiety disorder were assessed usingDSM-IVcriteria. Prevalence rates were weighted to adjust for the complex design to infer generalizability to the US population.

Results

The likelihood of having a mood, anxiety, or combined mood-anxiety disorder generally showed a pattern of decline with age (P < .05). Twelve-month disorders showed higher rates in women compared with men, a statistically significant trend with age. In addition, anxiety disorders were as high if not higher than mood disorders across age groups (overall 12-month rates: mood, 5% and anxiety, 12%). No differences were found between race/ethnicity groups.

Conclusion

Prevalence rates ofDSM-IVmood and anxiety disorders in late life tend to decline with age, but remain very common, especially in women. These results highlight the need for intervention and prevention strategies.