Face-To-Face Contact Alleviates Depression Among Elderly

The results revealed that older adults did not see their family and friends were at nearly double the risk for depression; 6.5% of participants who had face-to-face contact at least three times weekly had symptoms of depression, compared with 11.5% who had in-person contact only once every few months or less.

Those who only met with friends and family on a monthly basis had the highest risk of depression (11.5 percent).

Researchers assessed more than 11,000 adults aged 50 and older in the United States who participated in the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study at the University of Michigan.

In contrast, those aged 70 and older benefited more from face-to-face contact with children and other family members. While strong links were found between face-to-face contact and depression, regularity of contact with loved-ones by telephone, email or social media was shown to make no difference.

After analysing the frequency of face-to-face, telephone and written social contact, the researchers looked at the risk of depression two years later. The frequency in which the participants received phone calls and emails did not help or change their depression levels the way face time with friends and family did.

And in conclusion, Dr. Teo notes, “Most previous studies – including mine in [2013] – have not been able to specify whether the social contact is occurring in-person or by other means”.

The research doesn’t prove that personal conversations are more valuable than email and phone calls. “But the study data do show that there probably isn’t a substitute for good, old-fashioned in-person contact when you’re looking at protecting yourself from depression”.

“We adjusted for all sorts of things that could influence the findings, like having depressive tendencies from before”, Teo reported.

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Phoning and emailing did not seem to have the same kind of protective effect, says the study’s lead author Dr. Alan Teo, a professor of psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University and a core investigator at VA Portland Health Care System.

According to the Screening for Mental Health, depression affects almost 2.75 percent of men (three million men) and four times as many men as women die by suicide.

Over the first nine months of the study, those in the therapy group were about 36 percent less likely to develop depression than those in the comparison group.

Doctors should therefore consider “encouraging face-to-face social interactions as a preventive strategy for depression”, they say.