Adherence to Mediterranean diet and risk of depression later in life. A cross sectional study in East Attica, Greece

Abstract

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of depression later in life in an urban area and to inves- tigate the associations between possible risk and protective factors including adherence to a Mediterranean diet. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the active members of the open day-care centres for older people, in East- Attica, Greece. An anonymous questionnaire was developed to collect basic demographic and medical data, the Geriatric Depres- sion Scale (GDS-15) was applied to screen the elderly for depressive symptoms, the Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS) was used to quantify sleep disturbances and adherence to the Mediterranean diet was evaluated using the Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS). Statistics was processed with SPSS 24.0.