Recent research has revealed that as people get older they become more susceptible to a range of mental-health problems as well as the physical ailments generally associated with old age such as heart-disease and muscular-deterioration.
As the baby-boomer generation continues to age within the next two decades, this section of the population may find it difficult to cope with mental-health challenges due to inadequate resources of doctors, nurses and other medical-professionals who have the expertise to treat such ailments. In the United States, this has been referred to as the, “silver tsunami”, in which medical services could easily become overwhelmed:
“The burden of mental illness and substance abuse disorders in older adults in the United States borders on a crisis,” wrote Dr. Dan Blazer of Duke University, who chaired the Institute of Medicine team that conducted the research. “Yet this crisis is largely hidden from the public and many of those who develop policy and programs to care for older people.”
The research revealed that at least 8 million Americans aged 65 and over, already have a mental-health condition that requires regular monitoring and treatment, and that mental-health disorders relating to dementia are the most serious. This has alarmed many mental-health experts who have also welcomed the report:
“This is a wake-up call for many reasons,” said Dr. Ken Duckworth of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The coming need for geriatric mental health care “is quite profound for us as a nation, and something we need to attend to urgently,” he said.
The report also identified that grief, a process that can be seriously detrimental to mental-health and an overall sense of wellbeing, was a factor that has a seriously negative impact on a person’s psychological wellness. Unfortunately as people get older, they are more likely to experience the loss of loved ones, and whilst this cannot be avoided, it is something that health-experts and practitioners should continue to be aware of.
Comments are closed.