MedicalNewsToday.com wrote:Scientists have already shown that depression and other mental health problems can affect a person's memory in the short term. [...] Now, however, researchers from the University of Sussex in Brighton, U.K. have found evidence that links experiencing mental health problems throughout adulthood to memory problems at the age of 50 years. [...] In the new longitudinal study, the findings of which appear in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analyzed the data of 9,385 people born in the U.K. in 1958, which the National Child Development Study (NCDS) has been collecting.
"We knew from previous research that depressive symptoms experienced in mid-adulthood to late-adulthood can predict a decline in brain function in later life, but we were surprised to see just how clearly persistent depressive symptoms across three decades of adulthood are an important predictor of poorer memory function in midlife," says the study's first author Amber John.
Not sure this is at all surprising but it is nice there is being more studies on the matter. It is nice that they are using this to ask for more supportive measures to protect our mental health. They also were honest pointing they limitations of their studies, like how it was a one-time cognitive test to the people reaching 50 years old in the study, so we don't know for sure if the memory keeps degrading at a worse rate, if it might recover a bit with time, etc.