Depression and quality of life in a community-based glaucoma-screening project

To identify the prevalence and risk factors of depression among individuals given a glaucoma-related diagnosis at a screening program.

Cross-sectional community-based in a university hospital.

Volunteers from a community glaucoma-screening program.

After collecting sociodemographic information, participants were administered the Geriatric Depression Scale-15 (GDS-15) and the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire-25 (NEI-VFQ-25).

Participants were predominantly African American (73.5%), older than 65 years (65.7%), single (75.4%), and female (66.8%). Among 268 participants, 89 were diagnosed with glaucoma and 179 as glaucoma suspects. The frequency of depression among the glaucoma and glaucoma suspect participants was 18% and 16.2%, respectively. The mean GDS-15 score was 2.4 ± 2.7 with no difference between glaucoma and glaucoma suspect groups, p = 0.654. The mean VFQ-25 score was 78.6 ± 15.9 and was lower in glaucoma (74.7 ± 19.7) than glaucoma suspect participants (80.4 ± 13.6), p = 0.003. Risk factors for depression included difficulties with paying expenses (p = 0.017), Asian race (p < 0.001), and poorer scores on the VFQ-25 subscales of "General Health" (p < 0.001), "Distance Activities" (p = 0.024), and "Dependency" (p = 0.001).

Prevalence of depression in those diagnosed with glaucoma or glaucoma suspect was higher than previous estimates of the general population. Glaucoma-screening programs might benefit from including depression-screening protocols along with referral services or low-cost treatments of depression.