Centre for Policy on Ageing



Treatment of depression in the elderly — effect of physical illness on response
Author(s)	Mavis Evans, Margaret Hammond, Ken Wilson
Journal title	International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 12, no 12, December 1997
Pages	pp 1189-1194
Keywords	Depression ; Ill health ; Drugs.
Annotation	Previous research has found that medically ill depressed patients respond poorly to antidepressant treatment. Explanations for this have been suggested to include age as a confounding factor; inadequate doses of antidepressants due to problems with side-effects or overcautious physicians; and different subtypes of depression, some of which are not responsive to medication. This study aimed to determine whether the response to treatment of physically ill depressed older inpatients was related to their physical pathology and/or treatment, using data from a double-blind placebo-controlled trial. The study found a positive response to treatment of depression by medication in the presence of serious physical illness, however, it stressed that physicians must not be led to believe that the sole answer to depressive illness lies in pharmacological interventions, and must be discouraged to believe that the risk-benefit ratio of such treatment where indicated is too high.
Accession Number	CPA-980112407 A
Classmark	ENR: CH: LLD
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.