Spousal Associations Between Frailty and Depressive Symptoms: Longitudinal Findings from the Cardiovascular Health Study - PubMed (original) (raw)

Observational Study

Spousal Associations Between Frailty and Depressive Symptoms: Longitudinal Findings from the Cardiovascular Health Study

Joan Monin et al. J Am Geriatr Soc. 2016 Apr.

Abstract

Objectives: To determine whether older adult spouses' frailty states and depressive symptoms are interrelated over time.

Design: Longitudinal, dyadic path analysis using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model.

Setting: Data were from baseline (1989-90), Wave 3 (1992-93), and Wave 7 (1996-97), all waves in which frailty and depressive symptoms were measured, of the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), a multisite, longitudinal, observational study of risk factors for cardiovascular disease in adults aged 65 and older.

Participants: Spouses in 1,260 community-dwelling married couples.

Measurements: Frailty was measured using the CHS criteria, categorized as nonfrail, prefrail, or frail. Depressive symptoms were measured using the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale.

Results: Within individuals (actor effects), greater frailty predicted greater subsequent depressive symptoms, and greater depressive symptoms predicted greater subsequent frailty. Between spouses (partner effects), an individual's greater frailty predicted the spouse's greater frailty, and an individual's greater depressive symptoms predicted the spouse's greater depressive symptoms.

Conclusion: Frailty and depressive symptoms are interrelated in older adult spouses. For older couples, interventions to prevent or treat frailty and depression that focus on couples may be more effective than those that focus on individuals.

Keywords: depression; dyadic analysis; frailty.

© 2016, Copyright the Authors Journal compilation © 2016, The American Geriatrics Society.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: The editor in chief has reviewed the conflict of interest checklist provided by the authors and has determined that the authors have no financial or any other kind of personal conflicts with this paper.

Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

Actor Partner Interdependence Model with Frailty Predicting Depressive Symptoms (Actor and Partner Effects) Notes. W1= baseline, W3= wave 3, W7= wave 7. This figure represents Model 1 with frailty predicting depressive symptoms. Bold lines indicate significant paths. Model 2 differs from Model 1 in that there are arrows from W1 depressive symptoms to W3 frailty and from W3 depressive symptoms to W7 frailty instead of arrows from W1 frailty to W3 depressive symptoms and from W3 frailty to W7 depressive symptoms.

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