TOPLINE:

Socioeconomic disadvantages such as limited education, lower income, and unemployment were associated with a higher incidence of depressive symptoms among older adults with chronic disease.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers conducted a prospective study to examine the association between social determinants of health and incident depressive symptoms in older adults from 27 European countries and Israel using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe.
• They included older adults (mean age, 66.39 years) with at least one self-reported chronic condition (cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, neurologic, or musculoskeletal) and without depression at baseline, who were followed up on the basis of surveys from 2004 to 2022.
• During the follow-up period, incident depressive symptoms were defined as a score ≥ 4 on a validated scale for depressive symptoms used in older adults across European countries.
• Social determinants examined were education level (low, medium, or high), employment status (active vs inactive), household income (low vs high based on the country-specific median), and living arrangements (living alone vs with others).

TAKEAWAY:

• During a mean follow-up period of 3.16 years, 3668 new cases of clinically relevant depressive symptoms occurred in 12,319 older adults with chronic conditions.
• Low vs high household income (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.10; P = .009) and unemployment vs active employment (aHR, 1.17; P < .001) were associated with a higher risk for depressive symptoms.
• Medium and low levels of education were also linked to an increased risk for depressive symptoms than a higher level of education (aHR, 1.15; P = .008 and aHR, 1.36; P < .001, respectively).
• Women had a 57% higher risk for incident depression than men (aHR, 1.57; P < .001), whereas living alone was associated with a slightly lower risk than living with others (aHR, 0.89; P = .013).

IN PRACTICE:

“[The] results highlight the importance of addressing social inequalities to mitigate the risk of depression in vulnerable older populations,” the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Álvaro Besoain-Saldaña, Department of Physical Therapy, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile. It was published online on April 01, 2026, as a brief report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

LIMITATIONS:

Self-reported information might not be entirely accurate because people may forget things. Using a brief screening tool to check for depression might miss relevant clinical aspects. The results are only based on older adults with at least one chronic health condition and may not apply to healthier older adults.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors reported having no relevant conflicts of interest or funding sources for this study.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.