Literacy admittedly promotes healthy ageing,1 by being associated with a decreased risk of dementia.2 Even though literacy goes beyond the level of formal education, the latter is an important objective indicator of one’s cognitive skills. 
After the proper approval by the hospital Ethics Committee, we collected a sample of 51 elderly patients with mixed depressive-anxiety disorder (ICD-10), obtained randomly from the psychogeriatrics clinic, and analyzed the association between their education level and cognitive test performance. The association is used here for a brief ethical discussion about elderly decision-making competence for health informed consent.

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