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Opening Remarks
By Norm Abeles, Ph.D.
Past President, American Psychological Association;
Coordinator of the Older Adult Track, Clinical Psychology Program
Michigan State University, East Lansing Michigan
As moderator of this presentation I want to provide you with four brief
conclusions and a recommendation from our laboratory on applied research in
aging at Michigan State University. Following this I will introduce our three
presenters, Wendy Rogers, Ph.D., Mary Starke Harper, Ph.D. and Paula E.
Hartman-Stein, Ph.D.
l. Subjective memory complaints among community dwelling older adults (those
over the age of 55) are incredibly common. Subjective memory complaints include
difficulties in remembering names, faces, where you parked the car in the
shopping center lot and where you last placed your keys. These memory complaints
are very often related to mood related factors such as depression. More recently
we have found that they also occur in individuals who are anxious, especially
those individuals who are often described as chronic worriers.
2. In many instances (though not all) subjective memory complaints are not
accompanied by objective changes in memory in comparison to other normal older
adults. They are not indicators of senility, early Alzheimer's disease or
pathological forgetting.
3. Memory workshops (especially when they also include discussions about
anxious and depressive feelings) can be helpful in reducing memory complaints
and often provide at least short-term improvements in objective memory
performance.
4. While anxiety in older adults has been understudied, a consensus is
emerging that symptoms of anxiety can be differentiated from symptoms of
depression though there are some overlapping factors between depression and
anxiety.
Recommendation: Older adults should be encouraged to seek out professionals
to provide mood and memory checkups on a regular basis after the age of 60.We
believe this is important on a prevention basis just as it is important to have
ones vision and hearing checked on a regular basis. Professional psychologists
who specialize in the concerns of older adults are called clinical
geropsychologists. Many of them are able to provide mood and memory checkups or
can refer to professionals who are able to provide such services. We believe
that such checkups can reduce health costs.
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