Depression, cognitive decline linked in older Latino couples

Psychiatry professor Ladson Hinton has found that, in older Latino married couples, a husband's level of depression negatively impacts his own cognitive abilities and his wife's depression and mental faculties over time. The reverse situation, however, does not hold true. The findings, from an eight-year National Institute of Aging-funded study published online in Dementia and Geriatric Cognitive Disorders, provide some evidence that elevated depression in older adults may have an adverse impact on the cognitive functioning of the people in their social environment.