clinical features

Last reviewed 01/2018

The depressed old person may have:

  • symptoms of depressed mood
  • somatic signs
  • symptoms of anxiety

Clinical features are similar to depression in younger patients but the presentation is more variable in old age than in youth, and can range from a floridly delusional picture to an illness that is very hard to distinguish from 'understandable' unhappiness in the setting of physical ill health or emotional loss.