Depression, anxiety, inequality and ageing

Although research often demonstrates associations between being less well-off and having worse mental health there is less clarity about how age affects things and researchers often lump depression and anxiety together in their analyses. Researchers from the Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow studied 3,846 people over a 20-year period and found that social-class differences in anxiety and depression widened with age. The prevalence of anxiety decreased as people aged but decreased less slowly among manual workers. By contrast the prevalence of depression increased with age and increased more in manual workers than in white-collar one.

Green, M.J. and Benzeval, M. - Ageing, social class and common mental disorders: longitudinal evidence from three cohorts in the West of Scotland Psychological Medicine (2011), 41, 565–574