Depression and Aggressive Behaviour in Continuing Care: How Cognitive Impairment Might Not Explain the Whole Story
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context: There is currently little research examining the relationship between depression and aggressive behaviour among individuals receiving long-term care. Previous research has focused on older adults with neurocognitive disorders (e.g., Alzheimer’s). These studies have found a positive association between aggressive behaviour and depression and are additionally associated with cognitive impairment in older adults.Objectives: The current study aims to better understand the relationship between aggressive behaviour and depression amongst older adults with and without cognitive impairment, as previous studies have not yet examined how these relationships may differ across levels of cognitive functioning.Methods: Data from the Continuing Care Reporting System administered by the Canadian Institute for Health Information was used. At the time of analysis, data for individuals receiving continuing care was available across seven Canadian provinces and one territory.Findings: Data from 2,682,612 individuals were extracted (Mage = 80.42, SD = 11.5). A positive relationship between aggressive behaviour and depressive symptoms was found for those with and without cognitive impairment. There was no evidence of a mediating effect of cognitive impairment on aggressive behaviour. Individuals with symptoms of depression demonstrated more aggressive behaviours.Limitations: A limitation of the current work is the cross-sectional nature of the data examined. This restricts the ability to determine causation, and the questions of “Do depressive symptoms predict aggressive behaviour?” or “Are aggressive behaviours early symptoms of depression?” remain.Implications: These findings indicate that, independent of cognition, those with depressive symptoms are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviour. Recommendations on identification and treatment of depression in this population are discussed and related policy changes are considered.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.041 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".