Obviously, it's awful that such a large percentage of our elderly suffer from depression. However, as cruel as it may be, it's clear to see why there would be a lack of public interest surrounding geriatric depression -- because the elderly (typically) have less time left than their younger counterparts, people may not stress the importance of battling geriatric depression. Furthermore, because many elderly people are retired, some may argue that there's little economic gain to addressing elderly depression, as there would be no lost workplace productivity. Do these arguments follow logically? Are they moral?
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To further address the economic viability aspect of geriatric depression, the contribution of nursing homes, in-home caretakers, etc is a massive subset of the health industry as a whole. Yes, it is true that elderly individuals, many of which are long retired, no longer feed their wealth directly into the economy, but there does exist this massive amount of jobs that center around tending to those who are nearing the end of their lives.
It has become increasingly popular to shuttle off our older relatives to nursing homes, but many people across the world don't have the luxury of affording this care. The wealth gap within the US is ever widening, and the disproportions within old age care further reveal this.
https://www.umh.org/assisted-independent-living-blog/bid/302278/how-to-afford-senior-living-when-the-money-runs-out
I doubt many people are cruel enough to argue this. If all we as a society care about is workplace productivity, I'd say we have a pretty big problem on our hands. Following that logic, from the instant someone retires there's no point in spending ANY medical resources on them, physical, mental or otherwise, given that the elderly are such a drain on our society economically.
Overall, I find little logical or moral merit to this line of thinking. In the end, it amounts to punishing the elderly for the audacity of living longer than most people. Besides, especially as @vpathy20 says, rejecting our elders can lead to loss of motivation in our current workforce. In this hypothetical world, instead of looking forwards to lounging on sunny beaches and reconnecting with grandkids, aging workers would fear the day they'd be forced to quit their jobs—an oppressive cloud looming over the end of their career. It's clear both moral and economical reasons can be found to support our elders. If that includes allocating additional resources to treat geriatric depression, we ought to do it.
These arguments are very logical, but highly immoral. Yes, these people are no longer a part of the workforce, but they likely spent their lives in it. I would argue that it would be better economically to take care of them. Men and women in their 40s and 50s would be more motivated to work if they know that they will be taken care of when they are older. Why would a worker put their all into a system that will not give them the same attention when they need it?