A study found that older drivers who are depressed or taking antidepressants show more risky driving behaviours, such as sudden braking and unpredictable driving patterns, than those who are not.
Professor Ganesh Barberal’s team at Washington University in St. Louis announced on the 2nd in the American Medical Association (AMA) journal JAMA Network Open that they confirmed this association in a study on the relationship between depression, antidepressant use, and driving behaviour in 395 people aged 65 or older.
The research team said that older adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) frequently show risky driving behaviours, such as sudden braking and sharp cornering, and that this shows that regular depression screening and customized intervention are necessary for the safe driving of older adults with MDD. The research team noted that depression and antidepressant use are independently associated with older drivers’ risk of crashes, but it is unclear which factors increase the risk of depression in older adults during everyday driving.
In this study, they compared depression and driving behaviours of 85 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) aged 65 years and older who participated in the “Real Driving Assessment System Project” conducted from July 2021 to the end of 2023 and 310 patients without MDD.
The participants underwent neurological, clinical, mood and neuropsychological testing annually, and their everyday driving behaviours were recorded using a commercial data logger mounted on their cars.
Older adults with MDD were found to have 3.6 times more symptoms of depression than those without, 3.5 times more likely to use antidepressants, and nearly twice as likely to take other medications.
The researchers tracked the participants’ driving behaviour for an average of 1.1 years and found that older adults with MDD showed a tendency to continuously increase in risky driving behaviours, such as sudden braking, sharp cornering, and unpredictable driving patterns, over time compared to those without MDD. In addition, those with MDD drove an average of 31.19 km from home, which was more than four times longer than those without MDD (an average of 7.76 km), and they also showed higher levels of disorganization in their driving routes and turning radius.
The researchers explained that the results of this study show that MDD, a common and treatable disorder in the elderly, can increase both the amount and severity of risky driving behaviours over time. They went on to say that identifying driving behaviour patterns related to depression can improve the safe driving and well-being of older drivers, and that psychiatrists should consider the effects that medications may have on driving ability when prescribing medication.