{"doi":"10.1111/jgs.17024","title":"The Effects of Gait Speed and Psychomotor Speed on Risk for Depression and Anxiety in Older Adults with Medical Comorbidities","abstract":"BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Gait speed and psychomotor speed slow with age and may predict neuropsychiatric disease such as depression and anxiety. We explored the relative predictive values of gait speed, psychomotor slowing, and a composite index of these two measures on time to new episode depression or anxiety in older adults at risk for these common psychiatric conditions. DESIGN: Randomized controlled prevention trial with 15-month follow-up. SETTING: University-based late-life mental health research clinic. PARTICIPANTS: Two hundred thirteen individuals, age 60+ years, with subsyndromal symptoms of depression or anxiety and one of the following risk factors for these common conditions: mild cognitive impairment, knee osteoarthritis, or disabilities requiring home-based care. INTERVENTION: Participants in each of the risk factor groups were randomized to a depression-specific preventive intervention or usual care. MEASUREMENTS: Gait speed: 4-m walk test from the Short Physical Performance Battery. Psychomotor speed: Coding task of the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status. We created a composite index of slowing by determining whether participants exceeded established cut-offs for slow performance in both gait speed (≤0.8 m/s) and psychomotor speed (<7 on the coding task). Time to new onset syndromal depression/anxiety was measured using research diagnostic criteria. RESULTS: Fifty-four participants developed syndromal depression/anxiety (19.5%) over the course of 15 months. Participants with slowing in both areas were over twice as likely to experience new onset depression/anxiety (hazard ratio (HR) = 2.11; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.02-4.40, P = .046) compared to participants with no slowing in either area. Slowed gait (HR = 1.88; 95% CI = 0.992-3.55; P = .052) or slowed psychomotor speed (HR = 0.60; 95% CI = 0.14-2.58; P = .488) alone did not increase risk for depression/anxiety. CONCLUSION: Evaluating both gait and psychomotor speed in older adults with medical comorbidities and sub-syndromal depression may predict incident mental illness and inform prevention planning. Future research is needed to validate our observations and explore shared neurobiological mechanisms that explain this elevated risk.","journal":"Journal of the American Geriatrics Society","year":2021,"id":169723,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":28,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9495,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":701471,"name":"Helene M. Altmann","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":372257,"name":"Mary Amanda Dew","orcid":"0000-0002-4666-1870","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":415720,"name":"Steven M. Albert","orcid":"0000-0001-6786-9956","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301455,"name":"Meryl A. Butters","orcid":"0000-0002-2563-817X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700917,"name":"Ariel Gildengers","orcid":"0000-0001-9216-988X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":303746,"name":"Charles F. Reynolds","orcid":"0000-0002-2605-7887","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700918,"name":"Jordan F. Karp","orcid":"0000-0002-5171-5028","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":415718,"name":"Sarah T. Stahl","orcid":"0000-0001-5712-1266","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:15.560174Z","pmid":"33387385","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}