Abstract
Key components of cognitive lifestyle are educational attainment, occupational complexity and engagement in cognitively stimulating leisure activities. Each of these factors is associated with experiencing fewer depressive symptoms in later life, but no study to date has examined the relationship between overall cognitive lifestyle and depressive symptoms. This task is made more complex because relatively few older participants in cross-sectional studies will be currently experiencing depression. However, many more will show evidence of a depressive thinking style that predisposes them towards depression. This study aimed to investigate the extent to which cognitive lifestyle and its individual components are associated with depressive thoughts and symptoms. Two hundred and six community-dwelling participants aged 65+ completed the depressive cognitions scale, the geriatric depression scale and the lifetime of experiences questionnaire, which assesses cognitive lifestyle. Correlational analysis indicated that each of the individual lifestyle factors—education, occupational complexity and activities in young adulthood, mid-life and later life—and the combined cognitive lifestyle score was positively associated with each other and negatively with depressive symptoms, while all except education were negatively associated with depressive thoughts. Depressive thoughts and symptoms were strongly correlated. Cognitive lifestyle score explained 4.6 % of the variance in depressive thoughts and 10.2 % of the variance in depressive symptoms. The association of greater participation in cognitive activities, especially in later life, with fewer depressive symptoms and thoughts suggests that preventive interventions aimed at increasing participation in cognitively stimulating leisure activity could be beneficial in decreasing the risk of experiencing depressive thoughts and symptoms in later life.
Highlights
Key components of cognitive lifestyle are educational attainment, occupational complexity and engagement in cognitively stimulating leisure activities
Eur J Ageing (2016) 13:63–73 outcomes associated with depression and its complex association with late-life cognitive ability, it is of interest to investigate potentially modifiable factors that are associated with increased risk of both depression and cognitive impairment or dementia in later life
As participants could not be divided into equal-sized groupings by levels of depressive thoughts or symptoms, both depressive thoughts and symptoms were considered as continuous variables, with higher scores on the depressive cognitions scale (DCS) indicating higher experience of depressive thoughts and higher scores on the GDS indicating greater experience of the symptoms associated with depression
Summary
Key components of cognitive lifestyle are educational attainment, occupational complexity and engagement in cognitively stimulating leisure activities Each of these factors is associated with experiencing fewer depressive symptoms in later life, but no study to date has examined the relationship between overall cognitive lifestyle and depressive symptoms. It is important to consider potentially modifiable factors associated with clinically diagnosed depression and with mild depressive symptoms and those depressive thoughts that may in turn increase the risk of experiencing an episode of clinical depression. One such factor may be cognitive lifestyle
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