Comorbid anxiety disorders are common in late-life depression and negativelyimpact treatment outcome. This study aimed to examine personalitycharacteristics as well as early and recent life-events as possibledeterminants of comorbid anxiety disorders in late-life depression, takingpreviously examined determinants into account.

Using the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI 2.0), weestablished comorbid anxiety disorders (social phobia (SP), panic disorder(PD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and agoraphobia (AGO)) in 350patients (aged ≥60 years) suffering from a major depressivedisorder according to DSM-IV-TR criteria within the past six months.Adjusted for age, sex, and level of education, we first examined previouslyidentified determinants of anxious depression: depression severity,suicidality, partner status, loneliness, chronic diseases, and gait speed inmultiple logistic regression models. Subsequently, associations wereexplored with the big five personality characteristics as well as early andrecent life-events. First, multiple logistic regression analyses wereconducted with the presence of any anxiety disorder (yes/no) as dependentvariable, where after analyses were repeated for each anxiety disorder,separately.

In our sample, the prevalence rate of comorbid anxiety disorders in late-lifedepression was 38.6%. Determinants of comorbid anxiety disorders were alower age, female sex, less education, higher depression severity, earlytraumatization, neuroticism, extraversion, and conscientiousness.Nonetheless, determinants differed across the specific anxiety disorders andlumping all anxiety disorder together masked some determinants (education,personality).

Our findings stress the need to examine determinants of comorbid anxietydisorder for specific anxiety disorders separately, enabling the developmentof targeted interventions within subgroups of depressed patients.