Study: Depression Speeds Up Physical Illness Development by 30% in Adults
Adults with a history of depression gain long-term physical conditions around 30% faster than those without, according to research published in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine.
The team included 172,556 volunteers in the UK Biobank study, aged 40-71 years, who completed a baseline assessment between 2006 and 2010. They selected 69 physical conditions and followed participants for an average of 6.9 years. Initially, those with depression had an average of three physical conditions compared with an average of two in those without. Over the study period, adults with a history of depression accrued an average of 0.2 additional physical conditions per year, while those without accrued 0.16. The most common new conditions were osteoarthritis, hypertension and gastroesophageal reflux disease.
The results highlight that previous diagnosis of depression is a marker of risk for development of long-term physical health conditions during middle and older-age.
The authors add, “People who’ve experienced depression are more likely to develop long-term physical health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes; however, existing healthcare systems are designed to treat individual conditions, instead of individual people with multiple conditions. We need healthcare services to take an integrated approach to caring for people who have both depression and long-term physical health conditions.”
Reference: Fleetwood KJ, Guthrie B, Jackson CA, Kelly PAT, Mercer SW, Morales DR, et al. (2025) Depression and physical multimorbidity: A cohort study of physical health condition accrual in UK Biobank. PLoS Med 22(2): e1004532. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1004532
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