The Structure of Late-Life Depressive Symptoms Across a 20-Year Span:A Taxometric Investigation

摘要

Past studies of the underlying structure of depressive symptoms have yielded mixed results, with somestudies supporting a continuous conceptualization and others supporting a categorical one. However, nostudy has examined this research question with an exclusively older adult sample, despite the potentialuniqueness of late-life depressive symptoms. In the present study, the underlying structure of late-lifedepressive symptoms was examined among a sample of 1,289 individuals across 3 waves of datacollection spanning 20 years. The authors employed a taxometric methodology using indicators ofdepression derived from the Research Diagnostic Criteria (R. L. Spitzer, J. Endicott, & E. Robins, 1978).Maximum eigenvalue analyses and inchworm consistency tests generally supported a categorical con-ceptualization and identified a group that was primarily characterized by thoughts about death andsuicide. However, compared to a categorical depression variable, depressive symptoms treated contin-uously were generally better predictors of relevant criterion variables. These findings suggest thatthoughts of death and suicide may characterize a specific type of late-life depression, yet a continuousconceptualization still typically maximizes the predictive utility of late-life depressive symptoms