Depression is such a widely known issue now that it barely needs introduction. It’s something we Elves have covered with interest, looking at the effectiveness of various treatments, like psychotherapy, medication and exercise. For older adults though, there remains a somewhat hazy picture of what treatments work best. Most of the evidence base for the [read the full story...]
We know a lot about the health consequences of drinking too much alcohol, but most of this research comes from studies of adults in their twenties, thirties and forties. But what about older adults? The European project VINTAGE reviewed and synthesised the available evidence relating to alcohol consumption in older people across many European countries. [read the full story...]
Benzodiazepines are an effective treatment for acute anxiety and transient insomnia, but guidelines advise that they should not be prescribed for longer than a few weeks as their long-term use can lead to dependency and falls in older people (amongst other things). The evidence appears compelling and yet benzodiazepines are still widely prescribed in the [read the full story...]
Regular readers of the Mental Elf will recall the blogs (Here is the evidence for exercising if you are depressed and New Cochrane review shows that exercise helps with depression) I wrote back in June and July about the evidence for exercising if you have depression. A new systematic review was published in the British [read the full story...]
A number of reviews have been published in recent years, which explore the prevalence of depression in old people. Prevalence rates vary enormously from one study to the next and so the reviews tend to report quite a wide range, typically up to 10%. Prevalence is defined as: “a measure of the proportion of people [read the full story...]
There is a clear need for specialist assessment and care for older people who self-harm, according to two papers published in the May issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers from the University of Manchester studied 1,177 people over the age of 60 who were admitted to six general hospitals in Oxford, Manchester and Derby [read the full story...]
Late-onset schizophrenia is relatively common. Onset after the age of 40 years is reported in 23% of patients hospitalised with schizophrenia. The condition is different from early-onset schizophrenia on a number of counts, including the response to antipsychotic drugs. This Cochrane review set out to assess the effects of antipsychotic drugs for elderly people with [read the full story...]
Following on from my post yesterday about screening tools for depression in later life, here is a new meta-analysis that explores the efficacy of antidepressants for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients aged ≥ 55 years. The researchers from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy just searched PubMed for [read the full story...]
Depression often occurs in later life and people in poor physical condition tend to be more susceptible than others. Older people in hospital who get depressed have poorer outcomes, so it’s important that we know how to detect depression and manage it in the acute setting. This systematic review conducted by researchers in Swansea set [read the full story...]
The aim of this study was to establish the relative safety and balance of risks for antidepressant treatment in older people. The cohort study included 60,746 patients aged 65 years and over diagnosed with depression. The study was based in 570 general practices in the UK supplying data to the QResearch database. The study objectives [read the full story...]
