| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
Drug treatment of older people with affective disorders in the community
— lessons from an attempted clinical trial | | Author(s) | Tim Stevens, Cornelius Katona, Monica Manela |
| Journal title | International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, vol 14, no 6, June 1999 |
| Pages | pp 467-472 |
| Keywords | Depression ; Anxiety ; Drugs ; Living in the community ; Clinical surveys. |
| Annotation | Depression and phobic anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders in people aged 65+. SSRI (specific serotonin re-uptake inhibitor) antidepressants are effective in treating both conditions in younger people, and in treating depression in hospital samples of older subjects. The efficacy and feasibility of treating older people suffering from depression and/or phobic anxiety in the community with fluoxetine alone is evaluated. 67 subjects were identified as depressed and/or anxious at screening, and reassessed for affective illness at 3 and 6 months. Of these, 55 (81%) were eligible to take fluoxetine. 54 (98%) of these agreed to follow-up, but only 6 (11%) agreed to take medication. No subject was still taking medication by the end of the study. For those subjects on whom follow-up data were available, 70% of those depressed at screening and 97% of those with phobic anxiety retained their diagnoses at 3 months; at 6 months, figures were 65% and 92% respectively. Drug treatment alone is not acceptable to such older patients in the community. Further work is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of a key worker such as a mental health nurse in co-ordinating treatment of patients with these disorders. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-990825272 A |
| Classmark | ENR: ENP: LLD: K4: 3G |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|