Abstract
Psychotic depression in older adults is a severe and debilitating disorder. Up to half of older adults presenting with depressive symptoms also experience psychotic symptoms. Mostly, psychotic symptoms include delusions on financial, somatic or nihilistic themes. Particularly in late life, the depressive symptoms in psychotic depression are more severe than in non-psychotic depression, which is also the case when compared to psychotic depression in younger adults. Moreover, (depressed) older adults exhibit problems in different cognitive domains such as executive functioning, attention and memory. In younger depressed patients, cognitive problems ameliorate when they reach remission, but in older patients remission of depression often doesn't mean resolution of their cognitive problems. Although earlier research, inconsistently, showed that latelife depression may be a prodrome or risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, little is known about the relation between late-life psychotic depression and incident cognitive decline. In this study, patients with a psychotic depressive episode at baseline are being monitored regarding their cognitive functioning at regular intervals during a period of 18 months, and compared to a control group of older adults with non-psychotic major depression. Both global and specific cognitive functioning (executive function, (working) memory, and attention) is being assessed.
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