Indexed in

License and use

Citations

Altmetrics

Grant support

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by CIBER -Consorcio Centro de Investigacion Biomedica en Red-(CB/07/09/0025), the Instituto de Salud Carlos III with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ISCIII JR22/00011; ISCIII PI23/00614), by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion/a Agencia Estatal de Investigacion MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and "NextGenerationEU"/PRTR (TED2021-131120B-I00), by Fundacio La Marato de TV3 (202226-31) and by CaixaResearch Health 2023 HR23-00421.

Analysis of institutional authors

Share

Depression subtypes, suicidality, and healthcare costs in older adults: results from a naturalistic study

Publicated to:FRONTIERS IN PSYCHIATRY 16 (): 1560719- - 2025-06-17 16(), DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1560719

Authors: Conejero, Ismael; Porras-Segovia, Alejandro; Albarracin-Garcia, Lucia; Barrigon, Maria Luisa; Lopez-Castroman, Jorge; Courtet, Philippe; Baca-Garcia, Enrique

Affiliations

Abstract

Introduction: The burden of depression is increasing worldwide, particularly in older populations. While the impact of depressive disorders on suicide in later life has been clearly identified, less is known about the role of their subtypes and their costs in the elderly. Objectives: We aimed to describe the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics associated with the depression subtypes and suicidality, and their related healthcare costs in older adults receiving mental healthcare. Methodology: The study was carried out across four psychiatry departments in Madrid, Spain. Adults aged over 60 years were included if they attended the psychiatric inpatient or outpatient services and were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), recurrent depressive disorder, bipolar depression, or dysthymia. Sociodemographic data and diagnoses according to the International Classification of Diseases, 10(th) edition were obtained from electronic health records. Lifetime suicidal history, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in the previous month were identified using the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (CSSRS). Mean healthcare costs were calculated over one year. Results: N=2868 patients were included in the analysis. Of these, 550 were assessed with the CSSR. The mean age of the sample was 70.05 years and 75.9% of the patients were women (N=2177). Of the patients assessed with the CSSRS (N=550), 83.2% (N=458) reported suicidal ideation, and 7.3% (N=40) had attempted suicide in the previous month. Psychiatric healthcare costs over the follow-up differed between the depression subtypes (Eta-squared 0.003 CI [0.000 - 0.008]; p

Keywords