Late Life Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders are not uncommon in late life. These disorders are often under diagnosed or misdiagnosed in late life due to their symptomatic overlap with medical conditions, drug effects and the lack of standard diagnostic criteria developed specifically for detecting anxiety disorders in older individuals.( (Rajesh & Deena,2014). Another reason for poor recognition of anxiety disorders in the elderly is that the physical symptoms associated with anxiety especially sleep disturbances, fatigue, and restlessness, difficulty-concentrating that often occur in older adults, (Wetherell, Lenze, Stanley, 2005). Furthermore, late life anxiety disorders are often co-morbid with depression, substance use disorders and cognitive disorders resulting in greater complexity in making the appropriate diagnosis, (Kogan, Edelstein, McKee, 2000). The risk factors for late life anxiety include chronic medical illnesses, disability, and major illness in spouse. (Beekman , Bremmer, Deeg, Balkom, Smit , et al. , 1998). Other known risk factors included personality traits of neuroticism and low self-efficacy. In a longitudinal study, the onset of anxiety was best …show more content…
Recovery refers to how well people can “bounce back” from challenge and stressors, or the ability to return to baseline levels of functioning (Zautra, Arewakisporn & Davis, 2010). Sustainability or the capacity to maintain psychological health and well-being while continuing forward in the face of challenge, adversity, and daily stressors (Bonanno, 2004). The third characteristic is the growth (Aldwin & Levenson, 2004) which means new learning or advances as a result of the adversity. Resilience was also highly associated with both non-motor symptoms (less apathy, depression, fatigue) and a personality domain (more optimism) (Robottom,Gruber, Anderson, Reich,Fishman,Weiner, Shulman,