Sadness and Worry in Older Adults: Differentiating Psychiatric Illness from Normative Distress

Overview

Journal Med Clin North Am

Specialty General Medicine

Date 2020 Aug 11

PMID 32773049

Citations 2

Authors

Julie Lutz

Kimberly A Van Orden

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Older adults experience greater emotional well-being in late life. However, older adults may be vulnerable to certain physiologic risk factors, including less physiologic resilience to prolonged stress. Depression and anxiety can be difficult to diagnose in late life owing to differences in self-reported symptoms from younger adults and unclear distinctions between normative and non-normative emotional experiences. We discuss age differences in the presentations of depression and anxiety, and normative and non-normative late life developmental trajectories around bereavement and grief, social isolation and loneliness, and thoughts of death and suicide. We provide recommendations for clinicians for assessing and diagnosing older adults.

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