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Feb 23, 2019

Depression Through the Decades

Mental health awareness is a relatively new phenomenon that began in recent generations. For many people, the time period they grew up in did not promote mental health awareness and issues like depression were not taken seriously. D you believe that the possibility of developing depression at an early age, specifically in a time period when mental health awareness was almost nonexistent for some, contributes to the high rates of elderly depression we see today? Why or why not?

4 comments

4 Comments

Hyunseo Kim

Feb 24, 2019

I think the high rates at which we increasingly recognize geriatric depression can also be accounted by the fact that mental health is taken more seriously in society today. I do think developing depression at an early age may have a correlation, but more often than not, geriatric depression develops due to factors related to aging. Many elderly develop depression when they are older because they feel more lonely, helpless, bored, or sick as they transition to retirement and as they watch some of their close friends or family members pass.

mlee20

Feb 25, 2019

Replying to

The higher rates might also be linked to the fact that geriatric depression (or mental health, for that matter) is being increasingly investigated, but also that oppressed depression from earlier years might only be manifesting now in old age. If someone has untreated depression in their youth, chances are they won't feel better without the help of a professional. Additionally, if one develops depression in their teenage years and lives up to the age of sixty or seventy without seeking help, it means they've been going with undiagnosed depression for about fifty or sixty years of their life. The more people who have been oppressed or dissuaded to seek help for mental illnesses in previous decades, the more people we might see later who have or develop depression.

Lizzie Quinn

Feb 25, 2019

Replying to

@mlee20 I agree. If an elderly person were living with depression for a solid sixty or seventy years without adequate treatment, he or she might become accustomed to the daily pains that correlate with depression. With the stigma surrounding depression dwindling away over the past decades, more and more people, elderly included, can more openly reach out for help, but it can also be difficult to change how they go about their lives after coping with depression for so many years.

Ho Jin Jang

Mar 01, 2019

Replying to

@Hyunseo Kim I totally agree with your statement that high rates has a strong correlation with the fact that mental health is taken more seriously in society today. We are educated from a young age from wellness classes in the States or PSD classes in the UK that your personal wellbeing is the most important part of your everyday life. As this subject matter is discussed more frequently and seriously, the quality of education can be linked to such high rates.