Risk Factors Established for Reoccurring Depressive Episodes

Using data collected from the Statistics Canada’s National Population Health Survey, a group of investigators has recently established the factors most likely to control a person risk of reoccurring depressive episodes. These are previous depression diagnostics, smoking and lack of control.

The latter – feeling like you have no control over various aspects of your own life – is a significant threat to the mental health of even the sanest individual, but has especially harsh consequences for people who've suffered from depression before.

Smoking doesn't help either, say investigators at the University of Ottawa, who were coordinated by lead study researcher Ian Colman, PhD. The expert says that he and his team surveyed the cases of about 585 adults, who suffered from depression around 2000/2001.

“We grouped individuals into trajectories of depression using growth trajectory models. We included demographic, mental and physical health factors as predictors in the multivariable regression model to compare people with different trajectories,” the team writes.

Details of the work were published in the latest online issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), PsychCentral reports. The team reports that about 65 percent of the participants were women, and that the research group included people aged 16 and beyond.

One of the statistical correlations that surprised researchers the most was that more than 82 percent of all those who were suffering from depression tended to have either medium or high income. About 65 percent of depression patients in general suffer reoccurring episodes.

University of Ottawa researchers continued to survey the study group until 2007. It was determined that in excess of 50 percent suffered one or more relapses during these six years. Age, gender and income were found not to be associated with the risk of relapse.

“History of depression is a well-known clinical indicator of future depressive episodes; however, smoking and mastery are more novel prognostic factors that are not well accounted for in current clinical practice,” Colman explains.

“Future research should evaluate the benefits of including smoking cessation and mastery in existing clinical guidelines for the treatment of depression,” he concludes.