Article by by Gatwiri Muthara, AARP
“According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans age 65 and older.
Depression in older adults is more severe, lasts longer and has lower remission rates than in younger people, according to a recent study of adults ages 18 to 88 in the Netherlands.
Researchers there over the course of two years studied 1,042 adults diagnosed with major depression. They followed whether each study participant was still depressed after the two years, the severity of the depressive symptoms, the likelihood of experiencing remission and the degree of improvement in depression severity. The team found the outcomes for all four indicators worsened with age, especially for people age 70 and older.”