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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.3315
igaa057.3315
Abstracts
Session 10210 (Late Breaking Poster)
Depression and Anxiety
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Anxiety and Depression as Predictive Factors of Quality of Life in Old Age: A Longitudinal Analysis
Ribeiro Oscar 1 Araújo Lia 2 Teixeira Laetitia 3 Rodríguez-Blázquez Carmen 4 Forjaz Maria Joao 4 1 
University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal
2 
Instituto Politécnico de Viseu, Viseu, Portugal
3 
3
Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar | Center for Health Technology and Services Research (CINTESIS), University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
4 
Carlos III Health Institute, Madrid, Spain
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”900 900
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Research on the effect of age in quality of life (QoL) is controversial, and doubts remain if this effect is continuous and if it disappears when controlling for other factors. Most studies have verified the association of health-related factors, such as poor physical health, functional impairment, and depression with lower scores of QoL in old age. But studies that analyse such an association in non-clinical samples through longitudinal analysis and including anxiety as a mental health factor remain very rare. This study relies on data from two waves from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and focuses on a representative sample of individuals aged 50+ from Portugal. It comprises 1782 participants (baseline), of which 1201 were reassessed. The mean age was 64.8 years (sd=9.3 years) and 55.4% were female. Linear Mixed Effects models were performed to identify potential factors associated with changes of QoL across age. According with the final model (pseudo-R2 equal to 0.421), a significant effect of age as time-dependent factor was verified, observing a decline of QoL with increasing age. Years of education, depression and anxiety at baseline were significantly associated with QoL. Thus, the effect of age on quality of life remains significant even when other factors are considered. The influence of mental health on QoL reinforces the importance of intervening in both depressive and anxiety symptoms in old age.