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Lack of personal contact with friends and loved ones increases the risk of depression in older people, and communication by e-mail or phone (even regular) cannot replace it.
Depression is a fairly common problem among retirees and older people. For example, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on average in this country 1-5% of retirees suffer from major depressive disorder, but among those who need constant care and medical attention, this figure rises to 11,5-13,5 ,XNUMX%. Previous research has shown that lack of communication is one of the top risk factors for depression among retirees and may even contribute to premature death.
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Psychiatrist Alan Teo, an associate professor at the Oregon Health and Science University (USA), and colleagues set out to find out how the ways a person maintains contact with family and friends affect the risk of developing depression.
“It has long been demonstrated that strong social ties play an important role in maintaining mental health. But for the first time, we decided to find out what role the mode of communication plays, ”says Alan Theo.
The researchers analyzed data from 11 people aged 065 and over who took part in the University of Michigan (USA) Retirement Health Study between 50 and 2004. They were interested in how often study participants communicated with friends and loved ones in each of the four ways — in person, by phone, by mail, and by e-mail — and how this affected their symptoms of depression two years later.
The risk of developing depression in those older people who rarely saw their friends and family was almost twice as high. Symptoms of depression were observed in only 6,5% of those who met with loved ones at least three times a week, but they were present in 11,5% of those who saw loved ones only once every few months or less. At the same time, the frequency of communication by phone, e-mail or regular mail did not have a significant effect on the risk of depression.
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The researchers also assessed whether it matters who older people interact with. It turned out that for people aged 50-69, the best prevention of depression was frequent communication with friends, and for those who were already over 70, with children and other relatives. Notably, another study found that for middle-aged people under 50, poor relationships with spouses and relatives increased the risk of developing depression over 10 years, but the quality of relationships with friends did not affect this risk. Alan Theo suggests that during certain periods of life – when people are raising children or are already retired, relationships with family members come to the fore, but in the interval between these periods (at the age of 50-69 years), the support of friends is often more important.
“Our results show that not all forms of communication are equally beneficial. In terms of preventing depression, talking on the phone or via the Internet does not have the same effect as face-to-face meetings. The frequency of communication is also important. It is important for physicians and healthcare professionals to convey to retirees the message that face-to-face communication plays a critical role in the prevention of depression,” sums up Alan Theo.
Подробнее см. A. Teo et al. «Does mode of contact with different types of social relationships predict depression in older adults? Evidence from a nationally representative survey», Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2015, vol. 63, № 10.