Abstract
Objectives; Women over fifty have a higher prevalence of depression. Women have also been identified, in the literature, as less physically active. This study aims to examine the prevalence of depression and physical activity in women aged between fifty and seventy-four and to identify if a relationship exists between depression and physical activity levels.
Method; 3,679, community dwelling women, aged between 50-74, were identified from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), wave 1 dataset 2009-2011. Two age categories were created to enable comparisons between younger old 50-60 and those over 60. Socio-demographic, age, employment, marital status, social participation and clinical variable, mental health, pain and long-term illness, were identified to support categorical analysis with depression and physical activity. Descriptive statistics were used to quantify the percentage in the two age categories. Univariate analysis and multivariate regression analysis were used to identify the factors, which had an association with depression and physical activity.
Results; The overall rate of depression, among women in both age categories was 12.4%. Women in the 50 to 60 age category had a higher prevalence of depression -13.9% compared to 10.7% in those over 60. 32% of the women were identified as being physically inactive and this percentage increased as the women aged. Women who were physically active were found to have a lower prevalence of depression but women who were depressed were less active
Pearson Chi square test for independence indicated an association between depression and physical activity, marital status, social participation, employment, pain and long term illness. Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient gave a minus result indicating negative correlation, thus higher levels of physical activity were associated with lower depressive scores. Multivariate logistic regression analysis with depression as the dependent variable identified significant association for age, pain, long-term illness, social participation and physical activity. When regression analysis was conducted with physical activity as the dependent variable depression and social participation showed the strongest association.
Conclusion; The findings from this study identified a relationship between depression and physical activity. Physically active participants had less depressive symptoms. However, results also identified that women who were depressed were also less physically active. Thus the results indicated a bi-directional relationship between depression and physical activity and demonstrated the complexity of the analysis. Socio-demographics such as, social participation and age and clinical risk factors such as pain and long term illness were also identified that had an association with both depression and physical activity. However, despite the complex relationship between the variables, the evidence was clear, that the risk of depression is decreased in those who are physically active.
References
- Barbour KA., Blumenthal JA.,(2005) ‘Exercise training and depression in older adults’ Neurobiology of aging 26(1): 119-123
- Kearney P.M., Cronin H., O’Regan C., Kamiya Y., Savva G., Whelan B., Kenny RA., (2011) Cohort profile: The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. International Journal of Epidemiology, 40:877-884.
- Lindwall, M.; Larsman, P.; Hagger, M.S. (2011) ‘The Reciprocal Relationship between physical activity and Depression in Older European Adults: A prospective Cross-lagged Panel design using SHARE Data.’ Health Psychology, 30 (4).
- Morgan K., O’Farrell J., Doyle F., McGee H., (2011) ‘Physical Activity and Core Depressive symptoms in the older Irish adult population’. Centre for ageing and research and Development in Ireland (CARDI).
Ethical Considerations
Permission to access the TILDA dataset was sought and granted by the Irish Social Science data Archive at UCD. Exemption from ethical approval was sought for this study and was granted by University College Dublin, Human Research Ethics committee.
