TRIP

The very old may feel helpless, but not depressed

Reuters Health News, 2012

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - People over 100 years old may say they feel "helpless" and "worthless" because they can't do the things they used to, but that doesn't mean they're not in good spirits suggests a new study.
The researchers say their findings indicate that people around 100 years old may see life differently than people 20 or 40 years their junior and traditional tests for depression may not be effective in the extremely old.
"We're saying look at more of the components that make up depression," said Peter Martin, a gerontology researcher at Iowa State University and one of the study's authors.
"Some may be more relevant to centenarians than others." Martin and his fellow researchers examined existing information collected from 323 people living in Georgia between 1988 and 1997 who were over 60, 80 or 100 years old.
Each of the study's participants answered a survey known as the Geriatric Depression Scale, which asks 30 yes-or-no questions about whether the person was depressed in the past week.
Overall, the100-year-olds scored higher for depression than the people in their 80s or 60s according to the survey's summary score of all 30 questions.
The centenarians answered "yes" to about 13 questions on the survey while people in their 80s answered "yes" to about 12 and people in their 60s said "yes" to about 11 questions.
All of the 100-year-olds, however, said they were in "good spirits." Indeed, when the researchers looked at subsets of questions, they found the participants in their 60s and 80s said yes more often to statements like, "I feel downhearted," "I am not satisfied with life," "I am afraid of something bad," and "I do not enjoy getting up in the morning." "If you look (just) at the summary score you might come to the wrong conclusion," Martin told Reuters Health.
Even though the survey was developed for geriatric subjects, he says, some of the questions may yield misleading answers when it comes to the oldest old.
Some of the "yes" answers on the scale could be chalked up to the 100-year-olds' advanced age -- especially those relating to being less active, being unable to start new projects or saying they had lost interest or energy.
Other than physical impairments and limitations, Martin said, there are differences in other symptoms when you compare younger people to those who are over 100 years old.