Growing older is normal. Getting depressed is not!
We Americans live in a place that sometimes doesn’t have much use for old people or for old age itself. This is a point that Ronni Bennett makes often and well in her blog Time Goes By. The effects of “ageism” or whatever we may call it, however, go beyond unkind stereotypes and unfair treatment of those of us who are no longer young.
A more insidious problem is the outright wrong-headedness of some common beliefs about old age. Today I’m thinking particularly of the idea that depression is a normal part of aging. You do see a lot of older folks dragging around with down-at-the-mouth looks on their faces, but I don’t think that’s because they’re old. It may just be because they’ve been ignored, marginalized and patronized.
Click on the link to read what the National Institutes of Health has to say about senior depression. It’s probably a lot more common than even those who work in the field may suspect. I think that in many cases seniors themselves have bought into the idea that their depressed condition is normal.
It’s a theme that has to be revisited again and again, so here goes: depression is not a normal part of life at any age. If you have a parent who is acting depressed, you are probably looking at depression. You are certainly not looking at normal aging.
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Tags: normal aging, senior depression