SAN FRANCISCO: It is well known from previous research that depressive feelings are more common in persons with dementia. Many have interpreted this association to mean that depressive feelings are part of a dementia syndrome, while others think that the causative link is the opposite: that depressive feelings may contribute to cause the disease.
In a new study researchers have demonstrated that feeling of hopelessness indeed are more common among persons with dementia, but that these feelings already existed twenty years before the diagnoses were made.
The new findings give strong support to the idea that negative feelings already in midlife can affect dementia risk in later life.