What is true: ramesh’s family learned…?
From the book – Chapter 31: Later-Life and Dementia-Related Care
The right answer
They had mistaken depression for ageing
Depression is not “normal ageing”
Late-life depression is often under-recognised and mislabelled as normal ageing. Signs may include persistent sadness, emptiness or irritability; loss of interest; sleep and appetite change; fatigue; excessive worry about health; thoughts of death or suicide.
It is treatable. It can sit beside medical illness and beside dementia. Anxiety in this decade often looks like worry about health, money, and family, with restlessness, muscle tension, and broken sleep.
Treatment includes therapy, lifestyle changes, and medicines adjusted for age and other health issues. Older adults are more sensitive to side effects — falls, confusion, interactions — so doses start low and reviews are regular.
Read the full chapter – Chapter 31: Later-Life and Dementia-Related Care
Stories from real life
- Just Getting Old, Said the Family – Mr Hargreaves, seventy-two, had been a head teacher in Manchester. Since retiring two years ago and losing his wife last winter, he had stopped going to…
- Where Did I Put the Keys, Again? – Mrs Lakshmi, seventy-eight, lived with her son Arvind and his wife in Chennai. For the last year she had been repeating questions, leaving the gas on…
- The Carer Who Forgot Herself – Grace, fifty-eight, had cared for her husband Tom in Cork since his dementia diagnosis three years earlier. He no longer knew the day, woke at night,…
- The Empty Flat on Raja Street – Mr Fernandes, seventy, lived alone in Mumbai since his wife died and his children moved abroad. He ate lunch at a different tiffin place each day…
More on this topic: Ageing well, memory loss and dementia – caring for elders
More questions
- What is true: caregivers need…?
- Just Getting Old, Said the Family – what this story teaches, the signs and what to do
- Where Did I Put the Keys, Again? – what this story teaches, the signs and what to do
- The Carer Who Forgot Herself – what this story teaches, the signs and what to do
- The Empty Flat on Raja Street – what this story teaches, the signs and what to do
- When Dad Became Another Person – what this story teaches, the signs and what to do
- What can we learn from the story “Ramesh”?
- Understanding the load of later life
- Understanding depression is not “normal ageing” – later life and dementia
- Understanding dementia – later life and dementia