Clinical features
The depressed older person may have: (1)
- symptoms of depressed mood
- somatic signs
- symptoms of anxiety
Clinical features are similar to depression in younger patients but the presentation is more variable in old age than in youth, and can range from a floridly delusional picture to an illness that is very hard to distinguish from 'understandable' unhappiness in the setting of physical ill health or emotional loss.
It can be a clinical challenge to distinguish depression from dementia in older people, as both these diagnoses have overlapping symptom profiles, especially when depression affects the cognition and is presented as ’pseudodementia. (2)
Reference
- NICE. Depression in adults: treatment and management. NICE guideline NG222. Published June 2022
- Byers AL, Yaffe K. Depression and risk of developing dementia. Nat Rev Neurol. 2011 May 03;7(6):323-31
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