Science & Technology, UK (Commonwealth Union) – Dementia continues to be a large problem among the elderly and with a rapidly aging population together with lower birth rates in many industrialized countries are likely to make dementia an even bigger issue in the coming years ahead.
Recent analysis of health data led by the University College London (UCL) researchers has noted that the application of talking therapies is an effective treatment for depression in adults over 65 years old and could possibly be clinically associated with slightly lower rates of future dementia diagnosis.
The first-of-its-kind study, that was published in Psychological Medicine with funds from the Alzheimer’s Society, scientists evaluated if psychological therapies, like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), utilized to treat depression may play a role in the lowering of dementia risk.
The UCL-led Lancet Commission on dementia prevention, intervention, and care, indicates that roughly 40 percent of dementia cases could be linked to possibly modifiable risk factors. Prior studies have also demonstrated that persons having depression during older adulthood may have an increased chance of developing dementia in due course.
The scientists evaluated data from 119,808 persons over 65 years old with clinically vital levels of depression, who had accessed treatment through the national ‘Improving Access to Psychological Therapies’ (IAPT) service, between the years of 2012 and 2019.
IAPT is a free NHS (National Health Service) service and provides CBT, counselling and assisted self-help.
Depressive symptoms were gaged utilizing the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), which takes into account factors like a lack of interest in doing things, issues with sleep, and feelings of low mood.
The scientists then associated the IAPT participants’ outcomes with patients’ hospital records in dementia diagnosis. Both data sets were available for just 106,069 persons, giving researchers a study sample.
Data records demonstrated 101,452 of the study sample had no dementia at 8 years, contrasted to 4,617 who developed dementia.
From the group who did not get dementia, researchers noted 65 percent had vital enhancements in their mental health after therapy. When contrasted with those who developed dementia, 60.13 percent indicated reliable enhancements in depression following therapy. Therefore, there was lesser rates of reliable depression enhancement in the dementia group.
The scientists then evaluated the difference in dementia rates, between those persons who indicated enhancements in mental health after therapy, with those indicating no enhancement.
The complete, 68,987 of the study sample had enhancements in depression scores, when contrasted with 37,082 seeing no indication of any reliable enhancement.
The scientists discovered that in the groups who had an advantage from therapy and had a lowering in depression, 4 percent got dementia up to 8 years later. When contrasting the group where therapy had no reliable impact, 5 percent went on to get dementia up to 8 years later. Therefore, the rates of dementia diagnosis were slightly elevated in the group with no reliable enhancement from psychological therapy.
Researchers also noted that there was an association between the more therapy sessions an older person participated in and less rates of dementia. The scientists feel that this could be a result of a lowering in depressive symptoms due to engagement in the sessions for lengthier periods.
Lead author, Dr Amber John of the UCL Psychology & Language Sciences says “Depression is an important, potentially modifiable dementia risk factor. However, this is the first study to test and suggest that effectively treating depression in psychological therapies available in the NHS may be linked with slightly reduced future dementia incidence.”
“It is important to note that further work is needed to understand whether treating depression with psychological therapies can actually reduce dementia risk.”
