Psychology study on anxiety in older people

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A psychology doctoral study of how older adults experience anxiety and worry could be used to help health professionals meet the needs of people over 60.

Margaret Sandham, a Doctor of Clinical Psychology student at Massey’s School of Psychology in Auckland, is looking for people aged between 60 and 80 to respond to a questionnaire on their everyday experiences of worry.

The information from the study will be used to construct an age-appropriate questionnaire she hopes will be used by doctors, psychologists and other health professionals to help them accurately assess anxiety and its causes in older adults.

She says that because most anxiety research has been done on young to middle-aged people, the important differences in life experiences of older adults could be overlooked.

“Younger people may be more concerned about work-related issues, while older people may worry about their health – a reflection of natural developmental changes that come with ageing”, she says.

“It is important that psychologists understand all levels of worry, so that they can identify when it becomes problematic”, says Ms Sandham.

Often the willingness to acknowledge or discuss anxiety is difficult for people of a certain generation who grew up before psychology and its jargon entered mainstream life and who are perhaps afraid and suspicious of language related to mental health, she says.

But if anxiety about doing day-to-day activities becomes habitual and inhibits people from socialising and living normally, it is important they can get help, she says.

By constructing a questionnaire specifically addressing older people’s needs in language they can relate to, she says health practitioners will be better placed to recognise anxiety symptoms and to be able to help their clients.

She is seeking as many people as possible to fill out a questionnaire for the second stage of her study in which she wants test the questionnaires suitability for clinical use. Ms Sandham is particularly short of men for the study.

Ms Sandham says her experiences as a registered nurse at Mercy, Greenlane, and Auckland hospitals brought her into contact with elderly patients.

Her conversations with them sparked her interest in the mental well-being of older people whose needs and experiences she feels are, at times, ignored or misunderstood.

“What people need to realise is that feelings of anxiety are normal for all of us, and that anxiety is so treatable. However, the difficulty is getting a clear diagnosis, which is why this research is so important".

For more information or to participate in the study contact Margaret Sandham: 09-442 6107 or email Margaret@sandham.cx

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