Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2010 Dec;25(12):1222-9. doi: 10.1002/gps.2467.
The objective of this study was to evaluate relationships between the death of Queen Victoria and the depressive episode she experienced during the last year of her life.
The last volume of Queen Victoria's personal Journal was reviewed from a geriatrician's perspective, tracing the onset and course of depressive symptoms from entries beginning on 17 August 1900 and ending on 13 January 1901, 9 days before her death. The Queen's own words are supplemented with observations from contemporaneous secondary sources.
The antecedents of Queen Victoria's late-life depression, including multiple losses, disabilities, and chronic pain, taken together with the presentation of vegetative, affective, and late cognitive symptoms, suggested the presence of a distinctively geriatric major depressive disorder. The absence of any other medical condition to explain the clinical picture seemed probable but not certain.
Although historians and biographers have long been aware of Queen Victoria's final depression, the emphasis has mostly been on her earlier and prolonged mourning for her husband Prince Albert. Re-examined now, the Queen's Journal suggests that a severe late-life depressive episode occurring approximately in her last 5 months contributed meaningfully to her death.
本研究旨在评估维多利亚女王去世与她生命最后一年所经历的抑郁发作之间的关系。
从老年医学的角度回顾了维多利亚女王个人日记的最后一卷，从 1900 年 8 月 17 日开始的条目追踪抑郁症状的发作和病程，并于 1901 年 1 月 13 日结束，即她去世前 9 天。女王自己的话辅以同时代的次要来源的观察。
维多利亚女王晚年抑郁症的诱因，包括多次丧失、残疾和慢性疼痛，加上植物性、情感和晚期认知症状的出现，提示存在一种明显的老年重性抑郁障碍。没有任何其他医学状况可以解释临床表现，这似乎是可能的，但并非确定的。
尽管历史学家和传记作家早就知道维多利亚女王的最后一次抑郁，但重点大多放在她对丈夫阿尔伯特亲王的早期和长期哀悼上。现在重新审视，女王的日记表明，大约在她生命的最后 5 个月发生的严重晚年抑郁发作对她的死亡有重要影响。
