The characteristics of understanding of depression among older patients treated with antidepressants: a comparison between older and younger patients

Abstract

Background

To reveal characteristics of understanding of depression among older patients, we reanalyzed the data from a previous study of patients who were administered antidepressants.

Methods

A total of 424 outpatients were enrolled in this study. We used an original self-administered questionnaire consisting of eight items: depressive symptoms, the course of depression, the cause of depression, the treatment plan, the duration of antidepressant use, how to discontinue antidepressants, the side effects of antidepressants, and psychotherapy. Each item consisted of the following two questions: “Have you received an explanation from the doctor in charge?” and “How much do you understand about your treatment?”. The level of understanding was rated on a scale of 0–10 (11 anchor points). Subjects were divided into two groups: younger patients who were <65 years of age and older patients who were ≥65 years of age.

Results

Older patients with depression showed lower levels of understanding of depression and did not receive sufficient psychoeducation from their physicians, but their understanding of depression might not be associated with their remission. In the younger group, the scores of understanding of the course of depression, the treatment plan, how to discontinue antidepressants, and psychotherapy items, and the total understanding score of remitters, were significantly higher than those of non-remitters. In contrast, there were no significant differences in the items score or total score between remitters and non-remitters in the older group.

Conclusion

Older patients showed lower levels of understanding of depression and did not appear to receive sufficient psychoeducation, but their understanding of depression might not be associated with their remission.

Keywords:

• depression
• psychoeducation
• older patients
• younger patients

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all their coworkers of this study for their skillful assistance in collecting and managing the data. This study was funded by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Research (JSPS; #20333734 and 15H04754), Mitsubishi Pharma Research Foundation, Asteras Schizophrenia Research Foundation, and a grant from the Hirosaki Research Institute for Neurosciences. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Disclosure

Norio Yasui-Furukori has received grant and/or research support or honoraria from and has been a lecturer for Asteras, Dainippon, Eli Lilly, GSK, Janssen-Pharma, Meiji, Mochida, MSD, Otsuka, Pfizer, Takeda, and Yoshitomi. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.