Senior citizen drinking problems
labeled ‘invisible
epidemic’
May 29, 2002 - It’s being called an “invisible
epidemic” by some health care experts – the growing number of senior
citizens with out-of-control drinking problems.
According
to “Inebriated Elders,” an article published in the University of
Illinois Elder Law Journal at the end of April, as many as one in six
Americans 60 and older are overdependent on alcohol. Twenty percent of the
elderly who are admitted to psychiatric wards show symptoms of alcoholism or
substance abuse. By some estimates, alcoholism today rivals heart attacks as
a killer of senior citizens.
A
growing type of abuser is the “late-onset alcoholic,” according to
author Susan Abrams, a UI law graduate who is the clerk for U.S. District
Judge Harld A. Baker in Central Illinois. Such a person shows no sign of
alcoholism until major physical or lifestyle changes, such as health
problems, death of a spouse, financial worries, depression or sleeplessness,
trigger overdrinking after age 50.
Women
are more prone than men to late-onset alcoholism, Abrams reported, and women
also develop alcohol-related health problems more quickly. Equally serious
is the problem of elderly women who “often suffer from shame and
embarrassment, and their families often fail to help because of denial or
desperation.” Moving an alcoholic to a retirement community may actually
increase the problem because the social activities provide more
opportunities to drink.
Prescription
and over-the-counter drug abuse also increase with advancing age. While some
seniors turn to alcohol, others turn to antidepressant medications. Fifty
percent of all sedatives are used by people over the age of 59. One out of
six Medicare recipients is prescribed medication inappropriately, according
to a survey of elderly women.
One of
the most serious aspects of the “invisible epidemic,” wrote Abrams, is
the inability (or unwillingness) of doctors and hospitals to diagnose the
problem. The Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration has characterized substance abuse as “under-estimated,
under-identified, under-diagnosed and under-treated” among the elderly.
Only a
tiny percentage of primary care physicians consider alcohol abuse when a
patient shows symptoms typically associated with the problems, a 1998 study
found.
Even
when properly diagnosed, the standard methods of treatment of substance
abuse may be ineffective for elderly sufferers. Effective withdrawal from
alcohol or drug dependence is a psychological as well as physical process,
greatly enhanced by a spouse and other family members helping the abuser.
But the elderly often do not have a support system within reach after their
children move elsewhere and longtime friends leave the neighborhood.
Turning
to the government for help is not a viable alternative. Medicare will cover
the cost of alcohol detoxification, but will not cover a hospital stay for
rehabilitation if a less expensive setting is available.
Government-reimbursed alcohol treatment rarely lasts more than two weeks,
Abrams reported.
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