Internship Week 3

[nalty7]

As I explained in the previous post on Mondays I'm going to the administrative office, which is close to my home. Finally, we got to meet our supervisor. She was sick for a week and during the last week I didn't go to the office so I didn't have a chance to meet her. She was described as very nice by the two guys and she was indeed. Yet, I felt

Comments

[tokeruyouna]

I'm glad this week was something you particularly enjoy. :)

My mom recently told me that there is a high incidence of depression among the elderly, and seeing you discuss it and tests regarding it made me curious about something. Have you studied any things that people can do to reduce the chances of suffering depression specifically as an elderly person? Like anything elderly people can do to help avoid depression or anything younger people can do to help avoid depression when they get older? I mean things related to specifically to depression in the elderly, not just the things they say to do in general for people of all ages like exercise and stuff.

[nalty7]

That's a difficult question to answer because the researchers are still looking into it. Your mom is right, generally depression has higher percentages in young people (in their 20s) and in elders. But one of the first things I learned in geropsychology classes was that it's a different kind of depression. For example, the exam I mentioned in my post, GDS, can find depressive symptoms in elders but not in the younger population. According to one of the theories (there are countless) depression is the result of the malfuction of a brain system that controls emotion. Basically as we get older and reach our 60s we can't control this system well and studies have shown that elders can't tell thin lines of emotion like irony/sarcasm. In this case, we can't really do anything because it's part of evolution of the human brain. In cases like dementia, we also can't do anything about because the person realizes that he/she has problems and they will never go back to their previous lifestyle. Unfortunately, we can only work with healthy elders

[tokeruyouna]

Yeah my mom said it was different, which is why I wondered if there were any specific precautionary/preventative things for it. Thanks for your explanations!