Elderly & Depression Research

Depression in the elderly is neither normal nor inevitable. Most seniors who develop the condition have serious physical and lifestyle problems as well. Seniors who suffer from the condition require more medical attention and are more difficult to treat than those who don't. Early diagnosis, health promotion and efforts to keep them socially active and engaged can help to prevent and reduce depression in the elderly and in all age groups.

Causes

• Elderly people don't naturally develop depression, studies indicate. It's often triggered by deteriorating physical health. "In elderly people, depression mainly affects those with chronic physical and mental decline," George Alexopolous, MD wrote in a June 2005 issue of the British medical journal, The Lancet. Vascular disease that reduces the flow of blood to the brain may also be a culprit, the 4Therapy.com website notes.

  Quality of life issues, such as reduced income and solitude can trigger depression, too, Alexopolous added.

Who's Most at Risk

• Older women are more likely to become and remain depressed than men, a team led by Lisa Barry, Ph.D., reported in the February 2008 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. And, in another study, almost twice as many older women as men in Cache County, Utah, were diagnosed with depression. It's not clear why but women often outlive or wind up taking care of ailing spouses, and these could be contributing factors.

Consequences

• Older patients who are depressed and have other medical conditions seek medical care more often than those who don't. They also rack up about twice as much in treatment costs than their healthier peers, Jurgen Untzer, M.D. reported in a March 2009 American Journal of the Geriatrics Society.

  On the other hand, elderly white depressed males are more likely to commit suicide than any other group.

Detection/Treatment

• Primary care physicians tend to focus on physical ailments in their elderly patients and fail to realize that it may need to be diagnosed and treated separately, an article on the Consultant Live website points out. Learning to spot the signs can help prevent and treat it. Administering the widely used Geriatric Depression Scale (a short survey) to elderly patients can quickly spot undiagnosed depression in the elderly, Stanford University points out.

  Many doctors prescribe drugs to treat depression in people of all ages. But studies suggest that a combination of drugs and psychiatric counseling is more effective. And some seniors take medications for other conditions that rule out use of antidepressants.

Natural Solutions/Prevention

• Another study of the Cache County, Utah, seniors revealed that elderly residents who attended church services regularly were less likely than others to develop depression. So did accessing the Internet on a regular basis, a study of other seniors from the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies showed. This may indicate that older folks can ward off depression through direct and online social interaction.