Accumulating Multimorbidity: the Role of Depression, Socioeconomic Status, and Other Factors

Multimorbidity is a significant challenge facing patients, clinicians, and the healthcare system. This study examines whether depression and socioeconomic status are associated with incident physical illness and multimorbidity, after controlling for potential sociodemographic, behavioural, and clinical confounders. This is a longitudinal retrospective cohort study. Cohorts were derived by linking adult respondents to three population health surveys to health administrative databases in Ontario and were followed for ten years. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine the rate at which participants developed illnesses, and Poisson regression was used to examine the number of conditions developed after ten years. In this study, depression increased the risk of accumulating multimorbidity, in terms of both time to development of conditions and number of conditions accumulated after ten years. Higher household incomes were protective against developing a second and subsequent physical illness, but not the first incident illness in a disease-free cohort.M.Sc