Interaction of depressive symptoms and activities of daily living with mild cognitive impairment: a structural...

To analyze the interaction between depressive symptomatology, instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), basic activities of daily living (BADLs), and cognitive impairment in a sample of Colombians over 60 years of age by binary logistic regression and structural equation modeling.

Secondary analysis of data from the 2012 Salud, Bienestar y Envejecimiento survey, which included 1,957 people from Bogotá, Colombia. The sampling was probabilistic, clustered, and stratified. The instruments used were the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Lawton-Brody Scale, the Barthel Index, and the Geriatric Depression Scale. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed.

Bivariate analyses revealed differences in performance between groups. The binary logistic regression model explained 42.3% of the variance. Based on these findings, a structural equation model (SEM) was developed, which yielded the following fit indices: chi-square minimum discrepancy (CMIN)/degrees of freedom (DF) = 4.81, goodness-of-fit index (GFI) = 0.98, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.97, and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.04 (0.039; 0.049). The results show that IADL contribute most significantly to cognitive impairment, while depressive symptomatology and BADL contribute the least.

These findings suggest that depressive symptomatology and impaired performance in IADL/BADL are key factors to address in cognitive impairment, which highlights their importance in the context of mental and physical healthcare for the older Colombian population.