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Comparisons of the prevalence of and risk factors for elderly depression between urban and rural populations in Japan
International Psychogeriatrics, 06/29/2012
Exclusive author commentary
Abe Y et al. – Although factors related to depression did not differ markedly between urban and rural elderly people, some risk factors differed between the two areas. Effective intervention programs for elderly depression should pay more attention to regional differences.
Yasuhisa Abe (07/09/2012) comments:
Thank you for your attention to our report. We examined differences in the prevalence of and risk factors for elderly depression between urban and rural areas, whereas there have been few report about regional difference of elderly depression in Japan. We believe that our study would be of interest to the readers because the results demonstrated that there were two significantly different risk factors between urban and rural areas. Namely, poor social support was a risk factor only in rural areas, while sleep disturbance was a risk factor only in urban areas. In addition, we would like to include these findings in prevention programs of elderly depression in the future.