The British Journal of Psychiatry (2007) 191: 393-401. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.107.036772
© 2007 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
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Prevalence of depressive symptoms and syndromes in later life in ten European countries

The SHARE study

ERICO CASTRO-COSTA, PhD

Health Services Research Department, King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK and Rene Rachou Research Centre, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

MICHAEL DEWEY, PhD, ROBERT STEWART, MD and SUBE BANERJEE, FRCPsych

Health Services Research Department, King’s College London, Institute of Psychiatry, London

FELICIA HUPPERT, PhD

Department of PhD, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, UK

CARLOS MENDONCA-LIMA, PhD

Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

CHRISTOPHE BULA, MD

Service of Geriatric Medicine & Geriatric Rehabilitation, University of Lausanne Medical Center, Lausanne, Switzerland

FRIEDEL REISCHES, PhD

University Clinic and Outpatient Department for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany

JOHANNES WANCATA, PhD

Department of Psychiatry, Division of Social Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, Austria

KAREN RITCHIE, PhD

National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM E361), Montpelier, France

MAGDA TSOLAKI, MD

Department of Neurology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

RAIMUNDO MATEOS, PhD

Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

MARTIN PRINCE, MD

Health Services Research Department, King’s College London, and Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK

Correspondence: Dr Erico Castro-Costa, Section of Epidemiology, PO Box 060, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. Tel: +44 (0)20 7848 0341; fax: +44 (0)20 7277 0283; email: dacosta.bhe{at}terra.com.br, erico.costa{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk

Declaration of interest None. Funding detailed in Acknowledgements.

Background The EURO–D, a12-item self-report questionnaire for depression, was developed with the aim of facilitating cross-cultural research into late-life depression in Europe.

Aims To describe the national variation in depression symptoms and syndrome prevalence across ten European countries.

Method The EURO–D was administered to cross-sectional nationally representative samples of noninstitutionalised persons aged ≥50 years (n=22 777). The effects of age, gender, education and cognitive functioning on individual symptoms and EURO–D factor scores were estimated. Country-specific depression prevalence rates and mean factor scores were re-estimated, adjusted for these compositional effects.

Results The prevalence of all symptoms was higher in the Latin ethno-lingual group of countries, especially symptoms related to motivation. Women scored higher on affective suffering; older people and those with impaired verbal fluency scored higher on motivation.

Conclusions The prevalence of individual EURO–D symptoms and of probable depression (cut-off score ≥4) varied consistently between countries. Standardising for effects of age, gender, education and cognitive function suggested that these compositional factors did not account for the observed variation.


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