Activation de pensées automatiques négatives spécifiques vers 60 ans chez des sujets déprimés âgés de 20 à 99 ans

Depression is characterized by automatic thoughts called cognitive triad by Beck (hopelessness, worthlessness and helplessness). In a study with 400 patients, aged 20 to 99 years, with or without depression, we demonstrated the presence of two other specific thoughts: “impossible change with age” and “ordinariness of depressive symptoms with age”. These automatic thoughts are activated in older depressive subjects, but less activated in younger depressive subjects and even less in subjects without depression. These automatic thoughts are severely activated in depressive subjects starting at the age of 60 years.