Title: Keep Calm and Carry On: Progress in Understanding Depression, Neurocognitive Impairments, and Dementia
Abstract: In the United Kingdom, at the beginning of the second world war, governmentposters exhorted people to “Keep Calm and Carry On” when they might be tempted to despair and give up. Those following the long-debated and much investigated area of the relationship of depression to cognitive impairments and dementia may feel similarly and need such exhortation. When surveying the evidence, one may feel much like a sailor travelling on a long, slow tanker voyage across an ocean looking out at the seemingly never changing seascape and despair of seeing anything new. Yet progress is being made, the view is improving, and evidence for this comes from the research questions posed by the authors of the five papers 1 Wang L Potter GG Krishnan KRR et al. Neural correlates associated with cognitive decline in late-life depression. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012; 20: 653-663 Google Scholar , 2 Byers AL Covinsky KE Barnes DE et al. Dysthymia and depression increase risk of dementia and mortality among older veterans. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012; 20: 664-672 Google Scholar , 3 Schneider B Ercoli L Siddarth P et al. Vascular burden and cognitive functioning in depressed older adults. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012; 20: 673-681 Google Scholar , 4 Barch DM D'Angelo G Pieper C et al. Cognitive improvement following treatment in late life depression: relationship to vascular risk and age of onset. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012; 20: 682-690 Google Scholar , 5 Vasudev A Saxby B O'Brien JT et al. Relationship between cognition, magnetic resonance white matter hyperintensities and cardiovascular autonomic changes in late life depression. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012; 20: 691-699 Google Scholar in this issue of the journal. The question is no longer asked whether depression is a risk factor for dementia but rather whether dysthymia is as well and what might be the pathophysiologic substrates underpinning depression as a risk factor. And the question not asked is whether cognitive deficits persist in depression (let alone whether they are present) but rather what is the relationship between the different deficits, which ones improve with treatment and by how much, and again what might be the underlying biology of these deficits.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-08-01
Language: en
Type: editorial
Indexed In: ['crossref', 'pubmed']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 5
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