Seniors benefit from face-to-face socializing, wards off depression

This study used data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), a longitudinal cohort study of older adults in the USA (aged 50 or over) between 2004 and 2010, to assess links between different types of social contact with family members and friends, and the subsequent risk of depressive symptoms. Researchers found that study participants who regularly met in person with family and friends were less likely to report symptoms of depression, compared with participants who emailed or spoke on the phone.

Those who were aged 70 and up benefited most from visits from family.

While your days may be filled with electronic communications, a new study suggests that face-to-face contact might have more power to keep depression at bay – at least if you’re older. “By dissecting the mode of social contact, we were able to determine in this study that social isolation in the form of in-person contact significantly increases your risk of depression”.

The study also detected significant differences between the types of individuals – family member versus friend – that participants should socialize with in order to have the most impact on their depression levels.

The researchers then looked at the risk of study volunteers developing depression symptoms over a two-year period, while accounting for factors such as health status, distance from family members and history of depression. Besides other information, the study gathered data on the frequency of social contact via in-person, written (including emails) and telephone.

Nonetheless, the researchers harassed that the examine doesn’t undermine the e-mail and social media as a priceless technique of social interplay. Specifically, in a group of 5,000 adults (aged 25 or older), people with the lowest quality relationships had more than double the risk of depression compared to people with the best relationships.

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. Conversely, those who saw people just a few times a year were twice as likely to be depressed than the others. Researchers also revealed that having more or fewer phone conversations, or written or email contact, had no effect on depression.

Dr. Carla Perissinotto, an assistant clinical professor in the division of geriatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, put it this way: “This is a reminder that it is important for all of us to stay connected”.

“We should always make an actual effort to have face-to-face visits with our family and friends”.

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