Depression in Elderly: Pain Link

Several recent studies show that in some elderly patients who met criteria for depression, a large percentage of them visited their doctors with only pain complaints. There seems to be a direct relationship between the number of pain complaints and the likelihood of having depression. That is, the more pain symptoms the more likely the person is depressed.

Chronic pain can trigger or worsen depression in a person of any age, but these findings suggest that depression can be more easily missed in the elderly population because they may not look like the typical depressed person. Since aggressively treating depression can improve the pain symptoms (if they are determined to be depression related), it is important to consider depression (and get an evaluation for it) in an elderly person with multiple physical complaints.