Psychotropic Drug Use in the Elderly

Abstract

Antidepressant AgentsIt is important to detect depression in the elderly, since it is often responsive to treatment and since suicide is common in this age group, especially among depressed white widowers.^{3, 76} Other risk factors for suicide that are found frequently in the elderly include living alone, chronic medical illnesses (which may cause dementia or predispose to delirium), recent loss or bereavement, alcohol or sedative abuse, a sense of hopelessness about problems, and a covert wish by others that the elderly person would die.Clinically important depression is present at any given time in at least 10 per cent of . . .