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