How Can You Help A Senior You Care About With Their Mental Health Issues?

We’ve come up with a list of tips for helping a senior manage their mental health and ensuring they get the care they need:

1. Organize a medical file for your aging loved one. It should include their name, date of birth, and current prescriptions. It should also have a list of any vitamins or supplements and a list of all physicians and their contact information. Be sure to make a backup copy and bring it to all your loved one’s appointments.
2. Prepare for physician’s appointments by discussing the senior’s medication routines, problems or missed dosages, and any side effects they might be experiencing. Also, come up with a list of questions for their doctor.
3. Offer to accompany them to their doctor appointments. Bring a notepad for taking detailed notes. Ask for clarification of any information or medical terminology you don’t understand.
4. If a new medication is offered, speak with the doctor about how they work: the risks, side effects, and benefits of each option, and the how much they cost. Some medicines will require lifestyle changes, like refraining from drinking alcohol or avoiding specific foods. Be sure to discuss this part.
5. Do some research on any diagnosis. But be sure to get information from respected websites like the American Psychological Association and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Misinformation surrounding mental illness happens when people don’t use factual information.
6. Help the person you care about make a plan to take their medicines as prescribed and get their refills. This could also include noting side effects and learning when to call the doctor about negative reactions.
7. You and the person in question should make an appointment with their physician or pharmacist yearly to review all their medications, vitamins, and supplements. Doctors recommend taking them all in a bag, also known as a brown bag check-up. An appointment like this can discover duplicate medications, harmful interactions, and medicines that aren’t needed anymore or ones that should be phased out.
8. Only use one pharmacy. When one place has all of a person’s prescriptions on file, it helps prevent drug interactions, duplicate prescriptions, and allergic reactions.
9. Encourage the senior you care about to seek the right kind of support. Social isolation and feelings of loneliness will increase the risk of depression. A solid network of support is vital to the mental health of aging adults.
10. Encourage them to exercise as much as they can. Physical activity is a low-cost treatment for anxiety, depression, and many other mood disorders.
11. Be on the lookout for your loved one’s overall mindset and take prompt action if they begin experiencing any severe side effects or mood changes, including suicidal thoughts or hallucinations. If you’ve kept in touch with their doctor to learn about their case, you should be aware of the warning signs to look for and how you should react.

We hope you’ve found this article on dealing with aging helpful. Make sure to take a look at some other great reads we have on our site. We highly recommend reading: 7 Senior Social Anxiety Symptoms and 8 Effortless Ways You Can Cope