Mental Health and the Aging

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Excerpt from Mental Health and the Aging: Forum Before the Special Committee on Aging, United States Senate, One Hundred Third Congress, First Session, Washington, DC, July 15, 1993 The forum was convened, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room 562, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. David Pryor (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. Present: Senators Pryor, Cohen, Simpson, and Wellstone. Opening Statement By Senator William Cohen Senator Cohen. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please take your seats. This is not a Republican coup attempt to take over this proceeding in the absence of Senator Pryor. I believe he will be here momentarily, but in view of the fact that we have Mrs. Gore with us today, we thought we would try to start as reasonably close to on time as we could. I want to welcome all of you and thank you for attending this mornings forum. The focus of course is going to be on the mental health needs of our Nations elderly. I am particularly pleased that Tipper Gore has been able to join us. She has been a valiant crusader on behalf of millions of Americans with mental illness and their families, and we are very fortunate to have her with us today. One of the most daunting challenges that faces our public health system is how we are going to finance and improve the quality of care for the millions of Americans with severe, disabling mental disorders that can devastate not only their lives, but the lives of their families as well. The experts estimate that one in five Americans are going to suffer from mental illness at some point in their lives, as many as 40 million people in any given year. Equally disturbing are the statistics that reflect the prevalence of mental illness in our Nations elderly. Some 15 percent of Americans over the age of 65 suffer from significant mental health problems and an estimated 80 percent of the elderly persons in nursing homes have some degree of mental impairment. Particularly alarming is the fact that Americans over 65 are more likely to commit suicide than any other age group. The most prevalent mental disorder afflicting older people is depression. Ironically, while recent advances have been made, depression is an eminently treatable disorder, only a minority of elderly depressed individuals are receiving adequate treatment. And more disturbing is the fact that the vast majority of the depressed elderly don't even bother to seek help. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.