background Apathy is an important neuropsychiatric symptom, characterised by motivational problems that seriously affect daily functioning. Apathy is mainly investigated in clinical populations suffering from neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease and dementia. Data on apathy in late-life depression remain scarce.
aim To determine the prevalence of apathy in older persons suffering from late-life depression in comparison to a non-depressed control group.
method With the nesdo-cohort, the severity of apathy was assessed with the self-rated, 14-item Apathy Scale of Starckstein (range 0-42 points). Apathy is defined as a score of 14 or higher.
results The prevalence of apathy was 75% among depressed older persons and 25% in the non-depressed control group. Older persons with and without apathy did not differ with respect to age and sex.
conclusion Depressed older persons do have a much higher prevalence of apathy compared to non-depressed older persons. Although this finding is not surprising, the prevalence of apathy was much higher than expected a priori among depressed and non-depressed older persons.