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 “The key finding is that meeting friends and family face to face
acts as strong preventive medicine for depression, and specifically
we found the more often you got together in person, the lower the
risk of depression,” said Dr. Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at Oregon
Health & Science University in Portland, who led the research.
Phone contact protected against depression in only one situation -
when the individual was already depressed, Teo and his team note in
the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Email and other written contacts showed no conclusive benefit, Teo
told Reuters Health.
Nearly 8 percent of adults age 50 and older were depressed in a 2006
national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
and 16 percent had experienced an episode of depression in their
lifetime.
Past research suggests that lack of social contact with family and
friends can make elderly people feel isolated, lonely and send them
into depression, the authors note. But much of that research
combined different modes of contact.
Teo said his own face-to-face contact with his father, who is in his
70s, rather than their usual text messaging and Facebook exchanges,
spurred his interest in the study.
“I thought about when I do get together face-to-face, how meaningful
it is,” said Teo, who is also a researcher and clinician with the
Veterans Administration Portland Health Care System.
Between 2004 and 2010, the 11,065 adults in the study - all in their
50s, 60s and 70s - were surveyed twice. Researchers asked about
their social contacts, interpersonal conflicts, ability to complete
activities of daily living, and any depressive symptoms, such as
loss of appetite, inability to shake-off the blues and trouble
concentrating.
At the first survey and again two years later, about 13 percent had
significant depressive symptoms.
After adjusting for age, wealth, ability to complete daily living
tasks, housing size, social support and interpersonal conflict,
those who met with children, family or friends no more than once
every few months had an 11 percent chance of depressive symptoms two
years later, compared to an 8 percent risk among those with once- or
twice-monthly contact. Those with three or more times weekly contact
had only a 6 percent risk.
People who met with friends once or twice a week were also much less
likely to develop depression than those with contact only several
times monthly.
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For people age 70 and older, meeting with children was more
protective against depression, while those age 50 to 69 benefited
more from seeing friends.
But when in-person contact and interpersonal strife with children
both rose, risk of depressive symptoms also increased.
“The details of oppressing isolation haven’t been explored to this
extent,” said Dr. Robert Abrams, a psychiatrist at Weill Cornell
Medicine and New York-Presbyterian Hospital. “Everybody knows that
isolation isn’t good but (knowing) exactly what kind of contact and
with whom and what mode is most helpful, at least on a public health
scale,” said Abrams, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Dr. Robert Shulman, co-chair of psychiatry at Rush University
Medical Center in Chicago, said the results showed the importance of
human interaction with family or friends, and that “telephone and
other means just don’t cut it.”
Shulman, who also was not involved in the study, typically asks
older patients how often they see their kids or if they only call.
“You can just see the long faces sometimes where they feel forgotten
by family,” Shulman said. “We always encourage families to come in
with patients and encourage these kinds of relationships.”
Meeting with peer support specialists (as supportive friends) could
also help stave off depression in older adults, Teo said. “I think
there’s a suggestion that the younger folks should make a concerted
effort to reach out in person with those who are older,” he added.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Mc6BAQ Journal of the American Geriatics
Society, online October 6, 2015.
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