Optimizing Older Adult Mental Health in Support of Healthy Ageing: A Pluralistic Framework to Inform Transformative Change across Community and Healthcare Domains

This paper describes a pluralistic framework to inform transformative change across community and healthcare domains to optimize the mental health of older adults in support of healthy ageing. An extensive review and analysis of the literature informed the creation of a framework that contextualizes the priority areas of the WHO Decade of Health Ageing (ageism, age-friendly environments, long-term care, and integrated care) with respect to older adult mental health. The framework additionally identifies barriers, facilitators, and strategies for action at macro (social/system), meso (services/supports), and micro (older adults) levels of influence. This conceptual (analytical) framework is intended as a tool to inform planning and decision-making across policy, practice, education and training, research, and knowledge mobilization arenas. The framework described in this paper can be used by countries around the globe to build evidence, set priorities, and scale up promising practices (both nationally and sub-nationally) to optimize the mental health and healthy ageing trajectories of older adults as a population.

Attitudes toward mental health and mental health care among custodial grandparents

Objective: Two-hundred thirty-nine grandparents who were raising their grandchildren were surveyed regarding their attitudes toward mental health and mental health care as well as their use of mental health services, each twice over a one-year time frame.Methods: Mental health attitudes were assessed utilizing self-report scales assessing openness to seeking help, biases regarding mental health and mental health professionals, and breadth regarding beliefs about the origins of mental/emotional distress.Results: Findings suggested that grandparent caregivers were generally positive regarding their willingness to seek mental health care, biases regarding mental health professionals, and beliefs about the origins of emotional distress. Factors that predicted mental health attitudes reflected grandparent personal characteristics, aspects of caregiving, and sample demographics. There was a relationship between attitudes toward mental health and the use of mental health-related services, and having sought help was associated with mental health attitudes and emotional distress at both occasions of measurement and over the one-year timeframe. Some modest evidence was found for the role of openness to seeking help in partially mediating relationships between emotional/caregiving-related distress and mental health care use.Conclusion: These findings are important in understanding not only grandparent caregivers' attitudes toward mental health, but also can serve as a basis for enhancing their use of mental health care services.

Sex Differences in Anxiety Disorders in Older Adults

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent mental disorders. Although prevalence estimates are lower in males than females, the disability associated with anxiety disorders has been increasing in males. This review focuses on recent research studying sex differences in anxiety disorders and associated symptoms in older adults.

RECENT FINDINGS

Females are close to three times more likely than males to report most anxiety disorders. Heterogeneity exists in sex-specific lifetime and past-year estimates. Age-appropriate instruments such as the CIDI65+ show higher estimates than previous research. The profiles of females and males with anxiety with respect to depressive and somatization symptoms are different. Age-appropriate standardized mental disorder instruments have been developed and may be useful to overcome the challenges of observed heterogeneity in anxiety disorders and allow for future cross-country comparisons and a better description of the epidemiology and biopsychosocial factors associated with different types of anxiety disorders in older adults.

Association of age and gender with anxiety disorders in older adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVES

To provide an estimate of 12-month and lifetime prevalence of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) anxiety disorders in older adults based on published studies on this topic and to identify the impact of gender and age.

METHODS/DESIGN

A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed. Six databases were searched, and manual searches through reference lists of selected articles and reviews were performed. When the information was available, summary effects were calculated for the prevalence of each anxiety disorder and for every age and gender subgroups. Summary odd ratios (OR) were calculated to compare the prevalence of an anxiety disorder according to age and gender.

RESULTS

A total of 6464 studies were identified, and 16 studies were included in the meta-analyses. Prevalence was significantly higher in women than men for generalized anxiety disorder (12 month OR = 6.10, P = 0.001; lifetime OR = 1.96, P = 0.001), 12-month social anxiety disorder (OR = 2.07, P = 0.01), and lifetime post-traumatic stress disorder (OR = 1.93, P = 0.002). The prevalence of specific phobia was significantly lower in both the 75 to 84 and 85 years and above age groups when compared with the 65 to 74 years age group (OR = 0.70, P = 0.004 and OR = 0.63, P = 0.01, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest that the tendency for women to experience a greater prevalence of anxiety disorders remains present in older adults. Specific phobia was the only disorder to be less frequent with advancing age. This is likely to change with the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria because this new DSM version now indicates that fear of falling is a possible type of specific phobia and fear of falling is generally more frequent in the oldest age groups.