The prevalence and predictors of anxiety and depression in near-centenarians and centenarians: a systematic review

Abstract

Background:Current research on the psychological health of near-centenarians (95−99 years old) and centenarians remains limited. Existing studies have mainly characterized their physical, cognitive, and social health. Results on the anxiety and depression of near-centenarians and centenarians (more than 95 years old) have been mixed with some studies, finding higher rates of anxiety and depression among those older than 95 years and others reporting no difference in rates compared with younger age groups. This study aims to synthesize the existing literature on the prevalence and predictors of anxiety and depression in near-centenarians and centenarians.Method:A systematic review was conducted using Ovid Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, SCOPUS, and the Cochrane database. Common and conflicting findings among the literature were examined.Results:Thirty-eight studies met the inclusion criteria. Six studies examined the prevalence and predictors of anxiety, and 37 studies investigated the prevalence and predictors of depression. Five studies examined both anxiety and depression in the same sample. Prevalence data on anxiety and depression varied significantly, as did comparisons with rates in younger populations. Findings on predictors of anxiety and depression were contradictory.Conclusion:There is a large degree of heterogeneity among studies of centenarians’ psychological status. Findings conflict on the prevalence and predictors of anxiety and depression and rates compared with younger age groups. Variation in findings may result from the different inclusion criteria, sampling methods, and measurement tools. Better harmonization of centenarian study methodologies may improve consistency of findings to aid in developing clinical interventions.

Psychological Anxiety of College Students' Foreign Language Learning in Online Course

“…Among them, the FLCAS compiled by Horwitz et al up to now, is a relatively perfect special scale that has been widely used in the study of foreign language learning anxiety. Scholars have done a lot of research and measurement on foreign language learning anxiety from different perspectives and found that foreign language learning anxiety has an inevitable relationship with the overall effect of foreign language learning (Coulombe, 2001;Liu and Jackson, 2008;Yan and Horwitz, 2008;Marcos-Llinás and Garau, 2009;Roghayeh and Farvardin, 2017;Teimouri, 2018;Botes et al, 2020) and the cultivation of specific language skills in foreign language learning, such as listening skills (Elkhafaifi, 2005;Bekleyen, 2009), oral skills (Sellers, 2000;Jiang and Dewaele, 2020), reading skills (Zhao, 2009), and writing skills (Cheng et al, 2019), and also affect students' self-esteem (Horwitz et al, 1986) and self-confidence (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1991). Although some studies have shown that moderate anxiety contributes to foreign language learning (Park and French, 2013), most studies have confirmed that the impact of learning anxiety on foreign language learning is negative.…”

The complex journey into longevity: helping the oldest-old to live happier

“…However, as Cheng et al (2019) point out in this article, little research has covered the theme of the psychological health of these oldest-old people, and the studies that treat this subject offer conflicting findings. The need to understand how nearcentenarians and centenarians reach their age psychologically is due to the fact that there has always been the tendency to believe that old people grow to be depressed.…”

“…The paper by Cheng et al (2019) and the considerations made so far in this brief commentary suggest that starting an international consortium could be very useful, and it could give guidelines regarding the measures to be used in order to harmonize results and reduce the risk of misdiagnose. Besides, the study concerning these particular clinical aspects of mental health should involve clinicians or professionals prepared to differentiate, for example, "depression by pseudodementia and unipolar depressive symptoms from bipolar disorder symptoms" (Balsamo et al, 2018).…”

“…As we can understand from the work done by Cheng et al (2019), the various studies conducted on longevity are too heterogenous, and they often do not consider that how a person perceives her/his mental and/or physical health depends on factors that often are beyond the objective health condition. As Ribeiro points out, "There is a large body of literature concerning SRH (self-rated health) in later life but lack of evidence about centenarians' perception of health and its associated factors, which could increase the available knowledge on the strengths and resources individuals in very advanced ages have for facing daily life limitations" (Araújo et al, 2018).…”

Effects of physical activity and exercise on well-being in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

“…This leads to the assumption that lower levels of SWB are also linked to higher levels of psychosocial symptoms such as anxiety, depression and stress (Whitehead et al, 2019). In fact, there is evidence that supports this hypothesis among different types of samples, such as: children and adolescents (Pate et al, 2019), young adults (Whitehead et al, 2019) and older adults (Cheng et al, 2019).…”