The association of personality disorders and late life depression (LLD)

Introduction: With the growing number of older people around the world, clinicians are turning their attention to aging and mental disorders in the elderly. Late life depression is perhaps the most frequent cause of emotional distress and decreases the quality of life in elderly people. Long time the clinicians are interested in the influence of personality disorders on the onset of LLD. Personality disorders in elderly people are largely understudied. More research is needed in this area.
Objective: The aim of our study was to analyze the association between personality structure in elderly people and LLD.
Subjects and Methods: Our study covered 60 patients with LLD who fulfilled the ICD-10 criteria for depressive disorder and 60 people where LLD was excluded. All entrants had 60 or over years of age. We used: clinical interviews, direct observations, the Geriatric depression scale and criteria by the ICD-10 for Specific personality disorders (F60).
Results: In the examined group with LLD 33.33% had the dpendent structured personality, 21.67% an anxious personality, 13.33% obsessive compulsive personality structure, and 11.67% histrionic personality structure. We concluded that patients in the examined group compared to the control group in terms of personality structure show a statistically significant difference (p <0.01) between respondents with and respondents who do not have LLD.
Conclusion: Our study found an association among specific structure of personality and LLD, which represents a risk
factor for the onset of LLD. This information and future studies may improve the recognizing older people who could be at risk, the timely detection of LLD and the planning of appropriate pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments.
Keywords: personality structure – late-life depression LLD – elderly.