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Antidepressants for Elderly People pp 279–290Cite as

Factors influencing the outcome of treatment

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Abstract

While the prognosis of depression in old age is not directly equivalent to the outcome of controlled trials of treatment, it is closer to clinical reality and has been researched in more detail. It is likely to be affected by current clinical practice. Factors like concurrent physical illness, preoccupation with bodily symptoms and neurotic presentation can lead to underdiagnozing depression in the elderly (Baldwin, 1988), and there is some evidence that General Practitioners (MacDonald, 1986) and even psychogeriatric services (Baldwin, 1988) do not treat depression effectively. At the same time elderly depressed patients require one and a half times as many bed days as their younger counterparts and use a quarter of all acute bed days in a general psychiatric hospital (Murphy and Grundy, 1984). Meanwhile a controversy about whether to stress the hopeful or the gloomy aspects of outcome studies (Murphy, 1987; Baldwin and Jolley, 1987) may reflect a degree of helplessness in the face of a puzzling array of outcome data.

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Authors
  1. Klaus P. Ebmeier
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  2. George W. Ashcroft
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wales College of Medicine, UK

    Karabi Ghose (Honorary Consultant in Geriatric Medicine) (Honorary Consultant in Geriatric Medicine)

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© 1989 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Ebmeier, K.P., Ashcroft, G.W. (1989). Factors influencing the outcome of treatment. In: Ghose, K. (eds) Antidepressants for Elderly People. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3436-9_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3436-9_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-412-32460-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-3436-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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