Social and environmental factors and dysthymic disorder in old age

This community-based epidemiological survey is concerned with relationships between social and environmental factors and dysthymic disorder (long-lasting depression according to the DSM-III classification) in a Finnish population aged 60 years or over. A greater proportion of dysthymic than non-depressed men had retired and did not work at all. The occurrence of dysthymic disorders in both men and women was related to retirement because of sickness rather than age, a small number of rooms in their homes, lack of intimate friendships and the occurrence of many long-standing and current social stress factors. The dysthymic women had lived at their present place of residence for a shorter period than had the non-depressed women. A positive association of dysthymic disorders with moving house due to poor health and living in institutions was also found in the men, and with a low number of hobbies and poor social participation in the women. In addition, the dysthymic women felt their relationships with their spouse, children, daughters-in-law and friends to be more distant than did their non-depressed counterparts. The dysthymic women also felt that elderly people were not appreciated. The log-linear models showed three interactions for the dysthymic men and six for the dysthymic women. The dysthymic persons reported a significantly larger number of detrimental events of an interpersonal nature than did the non-depressed persons.