All of us are finding the current times challenging in one way or another. People have lost their jobs and have had their future plans interrupted or even ruined. Thankfully, there’s been a lot of attention paid to mental health and psychological wellbeing. It’s encouraging to see that people are open to discussing how they are feeling, and plenty of us are willing to lend a listening ear. Our Seniors, though, require a special consideration. They’re the portion of our population who face the most challenges in adopting new technology being used to overcome our current obstacles. They’re the ones we’re also trying to protect most due to their vulnerability.
Consider this: you live at home alone in the house you’ve lived in for the last several decades and you wouldn’t have it any other way. You have had strong ties to your community that, over time, have decreased as your mobility and transport access has changed but you still enjoyed going along to church, the local club or a special interest group. You also have your own health challenges, perhaps a heart or lung condition or you might have had a stroke at some point in the past and so you’ve been told to stay home unless you absolutely need to leave. Yet most of the things you enjoy doing are on pause – possibly indefinitely. You might have an iPad at best but your internet is unreliable and you don’t trust technology. After more than 6 months without a really solid light at the end of the tunnel, you’re starting to feel pretty hopeless.
It might be all well and good to minimise this kind of experience as one of the times – and it certainly is based on the experiences of patients walking into our practices. Yet we do a disservice to the real risks and harms that come about from not doing more to intervene. Depression already disproportionately affects our older population, especially those over 80 years. Add in the current social isolation and we are starting to only just see the effects. We know that those with depression who are socially isolated are at much higher risk of a fall and subsequent harm, of hospitalisation for a chronic condition, report a lower quality of life and a higher risk of cognitive decline.
This problem needs all of us to address it. Making sure to reach out to those we know and care about is a powerful step we all must take – whether it be picking up the phone or chatting over the garden fence. Encourage them to come for a walk with you if it’s safe to do so even. If you’re feeling like your profile matches the one I’ve painted here, ensuring that you have a trusted healthcare team is vitally important. Whether they’re supporting you with home visits, over the phone or in an environment you feel safe to attend can help you keep in your best physical condition because, ultimately, life will return to some kind of normal and when it does you’ll want to be at your best.