What Can You Do if Your Senior Is Depressed?

Depression can make your senior feel as if life and her situation are utterly without hope, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If you are seeing signs that your elderly family member is battling depression, it’s important to talk to her about what you’re seeing and about what she’s feeling. From there you can both take action that can help her in big ways.

Encourage Her to Talk to Her Doctor

The first step is always to encourage your senior to talk to her doctor. There may be underlying medical conditions that are contributing to the depression. Treating the underlying issue can often help to alleviate the depression, but not always. Regardless of the cause, once her doctor is aware of what’s going on, your senior can get additional help.

Stay Connected with Her

Often isolation and loneliness lead to depression. If this is the case for your senior, then staying as connected with her as possible is going to be helpful. Not everyone lives near their aging family members, of course, so using tools like video calling can be somewhat of a substitute. Finding time to spend with her, or at least to call her, can be helpful, too.

Work on a Plan that You Can Follow Together

Something else that can help is if you and your senior sit down together and work out a plan for helping her to manage her depression. This might involve following the care plan recommended by her doctor, adding talk therapy, or even using mental health apps on a smartphone or tablet. Other solutions, like starting an exercise plan after clearing it with her doctor, could be beneficial, too.

Find Extra Help to Offer a Hand

Part of what’s contributing to your senior’s depression might be the changes she’s going through as she ages. Some of the regular parts of her life that were easy before might be a lot more difficult now, and that can contribute to a sense of loss and sadness. Hiring elder care providers can be helpful because those necessary tasks still get done, but your senior doesn’t wear herself out in the process.

Depression can be an issue for your senior for a multitude of different reasons, so it’s important to help her to find all the answers that you can. She may not completely kick her depression right away, but your senior will know you’re in her corner.

If you or an aging loved one is considering elder care in Alamo, CA, please contact the caring staff at Golden Heart Senior Care of Walnut Creek. (925) 203-3039.