Depressive illness in the elderly: psychosocial and demographic study

ABSTRACT

Sociodemographic, clinic and psychometric assessment of 24 elderly patients with late onset depression and 22 middle-aged depressed patients demonstrated that elderly persons were more likely to suffer from a single episode of depression often precipitated by stressful life events. Middle aged depressives were more likely to suffer recurrent episodes of relatively more severe depression. Few differences in symptoms emerged between geriatric depressives and their younger counterparts, these involved greater self blame and suicidal ideation in middle aged patients and greater weight loss, somatic preoccupation, hypochondrical worries and psychomotor retardation in the elderly. Agitation and paranoid symptoms long thought to be typical of elderly depressives did not emerge as hallmarks of elderly depressed patients in the present study. Psychotic features did not distinguish the elderly depressives from their younger contemporaries. The findings of the present study indicated that neuroticism and stressful life events were important underlying factors in evolution of depressive illness in the elderly