An epidemiological approach to depression: social networks, physical activity and diet

Considering that causes of depression are still not well known, the association between social determinants and several lifestyle factors with prevalent and incident depression have been assessed, using data from the Maastricht Study. Results show that having a less supportive social network and lower amount of family members within the network are associated with 10-20% higher risk of depression. A supportive network might also encourage in maintaining a healthy lifestyle in different facets. In this perspective, our results show that prevalent and incident depression were associated with more sedentary time during afternoon and early evening and less physical activity (PA) throughout the day. Moreover, PA is one of the factors associated with cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), of which a higher level was found to be associated with 50% lower risk of developing depression. Lastly, our umbrella review on dietary patterns and depression found convincing evidence on the association between an increased adherence to Mediterranean diet and decreased inflammation with a lower risk of depression. These results were partially confirmed in our analysis in which higher adherence in the Dutch Healthy Diet was associated with a 20% lower risk of incident depression.