Depression and decline in elderly people

A study of more than seven hundred people in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that depression in elderly people can increase the risk of subsequent mental impairment and can act as a predictor of future intellectual decline. The researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Centre looked at the loss of executive functions such as making decisions, organizing, planning, and doing a series of things in a logical sequence and found that depression raised the risk of problems with these thought processes.