Off-campus UNL users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your NU ID and password. When you are done browsing please remember to return to this page and log out.
Non-UNL users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Characteristic symptoms of elderly depressives on selected measures of depression
Abstract
This research investigated depressive symptoms in the elderly in order to improve diagnostic accuracy among these patients. Select self-assessment depression measures were examined for sensitivity and specificity in detecting depression in the elderly. In addition, this research examined whether geriatric depression differs from depression in younger adults, and whether there are subtypes of depression in the elderly, based on age of onset of first depressive episode (early vs. late onset). Eighty subjects in two age groups (younger-adult aged 20-40 and geriatric aged 60 and older) participated in the study. Depressed subjects were obtained from psychiatric facilities in the Pittsburgh, PA area. Controls were obtained from senior citizens centers and elderly volunteers. All subjects were given the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS), a structured diagnostic interview, and received a psychiatric diagnosis based on this interview. They also completed three self-assessment measures. These were the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), and the Symptom Check List-90-R (SCL-90-R), with specific focus on the somatization subscale. Results supported the hypothesis that geriatric depressives endorse fewer and milder depressive symptoms than do younger-adult depressives. Results did not support the often discussed phenomena that elderly depressives are more somatic in their presentation of depression. In fact there was a nonsignificant tendency for the younger depressed to endorse more somatic symptoms than the elderly. Results also supported the hypothesis that late-onset geriatric depression can be distinguished from early-onset geriatric depression, based on self-report depressive symptoms. Late-onset depressives endorsed the fewest and mildest of all the depressive groups. Results did not support the hypothesis that late-onset depressives would endorse more somatic complaints. Geriatric depressives in general, and late-onset geriatric depressed in particular, fell in the "mildly" depressed range on both depression measures. It is suggested that these measures be used as screening tools in primary care facilities, using lower, rather than more stringent cutoffs.
Subject Area
Psychotherapy|Gerontology
Recommended Citation
Kongstvedt, Sheryl J, "Characteristic symptoms of elderly depressives on selected measures of depression" (1990). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9108229.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9108229