Is Your Mood Sudenly Changing?
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010There are many different mood disorders that require clinical care by a physician or other healthcare professional. The fact that depression can be either the cause or the consequence of other illnesses (Parkinson’s Disease, Diabetes, Insomnia, Thyroid, Dementia…) complicates both diagnosis and choice of treatment. For elderly patients with comorbidities, there can be a tendency for doctors to assign the highest priority not to depression but to the ‘other’ disease(s).
Many studies of depression in persons of all ages have indicated that the condition is less prevalent among the elderly than among the young, the above examples imply that major depression probably increases appreciably with advancing age between 55 and ‘the oldest old’. There are indeed indications that the rate of increase of major depression may be causally related to the rise in the elderly component of the population.
Care homes in the Channel Islands noticed that friends and family members have backed away from spending time with residents. Is living from day-to-day becoming more and more of a burden, with no light in sight? Talk therapy helps you to change the way you think, feel and behave to support you in feeling better. Sometimes friends or family members recognize that someone is depressed. They may respond with love, kindness, or support, hoping that the sadness will soon pass. They may offer to listen if the person wants to talk. If the depressed feeling doesn’t pass with a little time, friends or loved ones may encourage the person to get help from a doctor, therapist, or counselor.
One hypothesis answering the question why the disability impact of depression should be so much lower among the elderly than in early adulthood or middle age, is that elderly attitudes towards their own problems gradually change with advancing age. Attitudes can change materially with positive or negative effect between the early and late phases of old age.
Depression in physiology and medicine refers to a lowering, in particular a reduction in a particular biological variable or the function of an organ. It is in contrast to elevation. A study of 2,633 adults in Chinese cities has concluded that the gender difference is insignificant, except in the 35-49 age group where the lifetime prevalence of major depression for men was 3.6% compared with only 2.3% for women. Even in the West, the gender gap is perhaps less conclusive than appears at first sight.
In today’s depression, polypharmacy is a fact of everyday life among a significant proportion of elderly persons. A 2006 survey of patterns of medication use in the U.S. showed that 28% of non-institutionalised adults aged 65+ had used five or more prescription drugs in the preceding week.