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VIDEO: Depression prevention strategies similarly effective for black, white at-risk older adults

ATLANTA — Charles Reynolds, III, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Medical Center, provides simple strategies that were similarly effective for depression prevention in white and black older adults at-risk for depression.

“We’ve found that older black adults carry an increased risk for depression as compared with their white counterparts,” Reynolds told Healio.com/Psychiatry. “They live with a greater burden of medical comorbidities, particularly obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and other medical illnesses which represent a threat to continued mental health and cognitive fitness into the later years of life.”

They also have social disadvantages that place them at-risk, such as lower household income, compared with their white peers, according to Reynolds.

Despite this, Reynolds and colleagues found that simple interventions for depression prevention, including problem solving therapy and coaching and healthy dietary practices, had similar efficacy in older black adults as older white adults.

These findings have significant public health implications; which Reynolds discusses in this video.