[Depressive symptoms in geriatrics-More than the geriatric depression scale]

Depression is a common but often overlooked problem in the care of older people. It impairs the quality of life, worsens the course of somatic diseases and causes high healthcare costs.

To investigate the prevalence of depressive symptoms in patients receiving acute geriatric treatment, taking gender-specific differences and correlations with cognitive and functional impairments into account.

Retrospective analysis of anonymized data from 345 patients who were treated in an acute geriatric inpatient ward at a German university hospital in 2019. The geriatric depression scale (GDS-15), the mini-mental status test (MMST), Barthel index and documented depression diagnoses at admission were recorded.

Complete data were available for 286 patients and of these 36.8% showed noticeable depressive symptoms (GDS-15 > 5) but only 10.4% had a previous diagnosis of depression. There were no significant gender-specific differences. The MMST correlated negatively with the GDS-15 in women, while the Barthel Index showed no correlation.

Depressive symptoms are common in geriatric settings. Gender differences may play a lesser role in older age. The lack of correlation between depressive symptoms and functional impairments but the partial correlation with cognitive impairments, points to the diagnostic challenge of age-related multimorbidity. The discrepancy between noticeable depressive symptoms and few documented diagnoses of depression indicates possible gaps in the prehospital detection and recording of depressive disorders.