Depression should be treated

By KENT S. COLLINS

Q: Mother is only 72, but acts much older.

She talks endlessly and mindlessly about her aches and pains, and then wonders why family members won't visit her.

She frequently goes to doctors, but seldom takes the medicine or therapy the doctors prescribe.

She complains about being lonely, but has excuses why she can't leave her apartment to meet people at church, senior center or volunteer job.

As she grows more cantankerous, she makes herself more isolated. I don't feel right nagging my husband and children to visit my mother, when all she does is fuss and complain to them. I don't like being with her, and do it mostly out of guilt.

What do other families do with their elders like my mother? --- Mrs. T.

P.S. I tricked her into going for a mental health screening. It found she suffers clinical depression. But, of course, Mother won't go to therapy to ease that, either.

A. The specialists who could treat your mother's clinical depression --- if only she would let them --- also might advise you how to react to it. Their advice to you would help your mother, and ease your guilt. At least you would know you tried.

An Ohio woman wrote that after two years of watching her mother deteriorate, similar to yours, she set a schedule of visiting and chores to utilize her family to help --- and to force her mother to accept the help.

"I told my 17-year-old to spend two hours per week with her grandmother," wrote the reader, "and that the time had to be work time. They had to paint the walls, shampoo the carpets, clean some rooms. My daughter shouldn't have to suffer two hours of sitting and talking with Mother. The two hours of activity is easier on her and better for Mother."

Likewise, she scheduled her husband weekly to do repairs and chores at the elder woman's apartment. She directed a brother living nearby to take their mother shopping every Saturday or Sunday, "or risk me sending Mother to live with him."

And she scheduled herself to deliver her mother to the senior center twice a week, leaving her while she ran errands.

"The firm schedule of these activities is as important as the doing," she wrote. "Mother came to gladly anticipate them, and so complained less during the week. She had things to look forward to. And the schedule allowed me to brush off her frequent requests for service. 'Wait 'til Rob visits you tomorrow, Mother,' I tell her."

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

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