Depression is common in all age groups not just the elderly. FILE PHOTO | NMG
“Why is depression more pronounced as one ages? Can I avoid this?”
Recent
studies have identified loneliness as a potential killer of the
elderly. Indeed, some studies suggest that loneliness kills more people
in the West than smoking-related deaths.
In the UK for
example, up to 30 percent of senior citizens are classified as lonely, a
condition that affects their life in many ways. Some have impaired
memory, others physical ailments while for yet others, death comes early
for various reasons.
Sadly, not many people realise
that many conditions for which they take their parents to the doctors
for are due to loneliness. Recent research has linked hypertension,
diabetes, obesity, weakened immune systems, depression and anxiety to
loneliness. For the removal of doubt, loneliness makes all the above
conditions more difficult to diagnose and, more seriously, difficult to
manage. However, a person can suffer from loneliness at any age.
A
man brought his wife for evaluation of what was clearly a depressive
illness. The 35-year-old mother of two had developed a depressive
illness and was admitted to a clinic for two weeks.
On the day of discharge, she asked the doctor to speak to her
husband about what might have caused her depression. The doctor obliged
and explained to the 40-year-old husband that his father was at least in
part to blame. The man had stayed in the son’s house since his wife
left for the United States.
Shocked, the young man
wanted an explanation. Soon he sought a second opinion because in his
opinion the first doctor was influenced by his wife. The second
psychiatrist arrived at the same conclusion. His wife was depressed
because she could no longer cope with three generations of people in her
two-bedroom flat in Kilimani. Worst of all, she had become frigid
because while her father-in-law was in the house, sex was a no-no. The
presence of the old man in the flat had led to a serious marital
problem.
He put pressure on her and she became colder and more frigid. A complicated marital problem arose where there had been none.
The
second doctor helped them find a solution; why not send the old man to
the US where his wife had gone to be with his daughter who had a baby.
The old man who had by then run a huge medical bill blossomed. He
quickly went back to the village, put his house in order, and soon had
no time for doctors’ appointments in Nairobi.
Headaches
were things of the past, his slow rather irritating walk and speech
were replaced by optimistic talk about life with his wife in the US.
Looking
back, the family had failed to understand the nature of growing old. He
and his wife had been married for 50 years. It was their youngest
daughter who had caused the disruption by getting a baby and calling for
her mother to come and help her around.
The family had
called in a young grandchild to look after the old man. The boy
preferred the company of girls and left early in the morning and came
home after dark. The old man discovered that in the flat in Kilimani,
his grandchild gave him company. His daughter-in-law was a great cook.
The headaches kept him in the city.
The simple
diagnosis on this seemingly complex case was that we had a lonely man in
Nyamira who got better when he got to New Jersey. Old men with wives
must be together for the sake of well-being.
Depression
is common in all age groups not just the elderly. It is, however, more
complex in the elderly and leads to suicide. Part of its complications
and difficulties in diagnosis arise from the fact of an ageing brain.
That is why perhaps you have observed that depression is more pronounced
as one ages.
The take-home message here is that
loneliness causes depression and death in some elderly people. Consult a
mental health expert if in doubt.
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