How to identify old people with anxiety – 5 questions; plus expert tips on what will help, from breathwork and yoga to psychotherapy
- Anxiety can be difficult to identify in older adults, who often minimise their symptoms; five simple questions can show whether they may suffer from the condition
- It is odd, then, that experts on preventive health care in the US did not recommend anxiety checks include the over-65s, given that effective treatments exist
Anxiety is the most common psychological disorder affecting adults in the United States, and many other places. In older people, it is associated with considerable distress as well as ill health, diminished quality of life and elevated rates of disability.
Yet when the US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent, influential panel of experts, suggested last year that adults be screened for anxiety, it left out one group – people 65 and older.
The major reason the task force cited in draft recommendations issued in September? “The current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for anxiety” in all older adults. Final recommendations are expected later this year.
This “we don’t know enough yet” stance does not sit well with some experts who study and treat elderly people with anxiety.
Dr Carmen Andreescu, a US-based associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, called the task force’s position “baffling” because “it’s well established that anxiety isn’t uncommon in older adults and effective treatments exist”.
“I cannot think of any danger in identifying anxiety in older adults, especially because doing so has no harm and we can do things to reduce it,” said Dr Helen Lavretsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.