The study suggests that older people with depression can use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) to reduce their risk of developing dementia.
Previous research has shown that people with depression are twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s and other dementias later in life.
Now, researchers have found that curbing depression not only improves your mental health at this stage, but it may also reduce your risk of developing dementia in the future.
Successful treatment of people over 65 with cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling or guided self-help for depression reduces the risk of developing dementia by 12 percent compared to those whose therapy was unsuccessful, according to a study from University College London.
About two-thirds of the patients who participated in the interview noticed a significant improvement in their symptoms of depression. This suggests that mental illness treatments are effective and may help reduce future cases of dementia as more older people receive treatment.
“This is the first study to test and suggest that effective treatment of depression with psychological therapies available on the NHS may be associated with a slight reduction in the incidence of dementia in the future,” the doctor said. Amber John from University College London.
She said the results of the study once again highlight the importance of older people seeking treatment for depression.
“Older people are currently underrepresented in psychological therapy services. These results show that improving access to these services may be an important goal for them, as they can help reduce the risk of dementia, but are also important in their own right,” she said.
Dr John pointed to NHS estimates that 85% of older people with depressive symptoms are not receiving NHS treatment and are five times less likely to seek psychological help than younger people in the UK.
Katherine Gray of the Alzheimer’s Society, who funded the study, said: “Previous research has identified depression as a risk factor for dementia, but this study suggests for the first time that treating depression with available NHS psychological therapies can help impact health.” Dementia diagnosis rates up to eight years later.
“This is another important step forward in understanding how we can reduce the risk of dementia later in life,” she said.
The study also found “a small but significant association between the number of sessions attended and the onset of dementia.”
The study included 106,069 people over the age of 65 with clinically significant depression who were receiving treatment.
Of these, 101,452 did not develop dementia after eight years, compared to 4,617 who developed dementia.
while Dr. John, encouraged by her findings, warned that her study found a “link” between effective cognitive therapy and risk of dementia, rather than conclusively showing that one causes the other.
Therefore, further studies are needed to confirm the results. For example, it is possible that, at least in some cases, lack of recovery during therapy is an early symptom of dementia, although neurodegeneration in the brain prior to the onset of cognitive symptoms may affect response to therapy.
In these cases, treatment may have failed because the patient already had dementia, rather than developing dementia because the treatment was ineffective. This could potentially skew the results of the study.
“Our results may be related to the second explanation. People with comorbid dementia who have not yet been diagnosed may feel worse under treatment—their depression does not improve—because of the cognitive impairment that occurs or because treatments are not appropriate for this population. Future research should focus on identifying these possibilities.”
It is not clear why there is such a strong link between depression and dementia. Researchers believe that depression may contribute to dementia, although they are not sure why, but they also point out that depression and dementia simply “share a common genetic or neurophysiological cause.”
The study also found additional evidence that antidepressants may increase the risk of dementia, which is the opposite effect of talking therapy, although it is not clear why.
In many cases, people with depression can do both, meaning that the effect of one can offset the other.
“Remarkably, a large proportion of the study participants were prescribed or taking psychiatric drugs. [such as antidepressants] due to their depressive symptoms,” the study says.
“This is important because in this study and in previous studies, the use of psychiatric drugs has been associated with an increase in dementia in older people. The reasons for this cannot be inferred from this study. It’s possible [is through] specific biological pathways.
Research published in the journal psychological medicine.
Source: I News
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