Help-seeking for psychological distress and its association with anxiety in the oldest old – results from the AgeQualiDe cohort study

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to examine aspects of help-seeking for psychological distress and its association with increased anxiety symptoms in the oldest old.

Method: Baseline data from AgeQualiDe, a multicenter cohort study of people aged 85 and over recruited in primary care, were analyzed. Help-seeking for psychological distress (items from the Camberwell Assessment of Need for the Elderly) was analyzed using ordinal and logistic regression models as a function of increased anxiety symptoms (Geriatric Anxiety Inventory-Short Form ≥ 3), as well as relevant socio-demographic and health-related covariates.

Results: N = 155 (18.1% of the sample) reported having experienced psychological distress recently and were thus included in the analysis. Among those, 26.5% reported experiencing increased anxiety symptoms. On a descriptive level, 76.8% sought informal, 29.0% sought formal, and 18.1% sought no help for psychological distress. In covariate-adjusted regression models, increased anxiety was significantly associated with increased use of informal support (OR: 2.92, 95% CI: 1.31–6.48), but was neither associated with formal (OR: 0.72, 95% CI: 0.26–1.97) nor no help-seeking (OR: 0.28, 95% CI: 0.08–1.05).

Conclusion: A large proportion of those experiencing psychological distress sought support from informal sources in this study. Anxiety symptoms in the oldest old were associated with the increased use of informal support, but not formal support or no help-seeking. Training and support for people providing informal help to those with mental health problems should be promoted to reduce a possible burden. However, future research addressing underlying mechanisms is needed.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• help-seeking
• formal
• informal
• oldest old

Acknowledgements

We want to thank both all participating patients and their general practitioners for their good collaboration.

Members of the AgeCoDe & AgeQualiDe Study Group: Wolfgang Maier (Principal Investigator), Martin Scherer (Principal Investigator), Steffi G. Riedel-Heller (Principal Investigator), Heinz-Harald Abholz, Christian Brettschneider, Cadja Bachmann, Horst Bickel, Wolfgang Blank, Hendrik van den Bussche, Sandra Eifflaender-Gorfer, Marion Eisele, Annette Ernst, Angela Fuchs, André Hajek, Kathrin Heser, Frank Jessen, Hanna Kaduszkiewicz, Teresa Kaufeler, Mirjam Köhler, Hans-Helmut König, Alexander Koppara, Diana Lubisch, Tobias Luck, Dagmar Lühmann, Melanie Luppa, Tina Mallon, Manfred Mayer, Edelgard Mösch, Michael Pentzek, Jana Prokein, Alfredo Ramirez, Susanne Röhr, Anna Schumacher, Janine Stein, Susanne Steinmann, Franziska Tebarth, Hendrik van den Bussche (Principal Investigator 2002-2011), Carolin van der Leeden, Michael Wagner, Klaus Weckbecker, Dagmar Weeg, Jochen Werle, Siegfried Weyerer, Birgitt Wiese, Steffen Wolfsgruber, Thomas Zimmermann.

Data availability statement

Due to restrictions that protect participant privacy, data are available upon request. Legal restrictions in form of data guidelines require the central data center to be involved in any handling and distribution of all data. The data will be available upon request to all interested researchers. Interested parties may contact the Working Group Medical Statistics and IT-Infrastructure (contact information: Birgitt Wiese, [email protected], [phone]).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This publication is part of the German Research Network on Dementia (KND), the German Research Network on Degenerative Dementia (KNDD; German Study on Ageing, Cognition and Dementia in Primary Care Patients; AgeCoDe), and the Health Service Research Initiative (Study on Needs, health service use, costs and health-related quality of life in a large sample of oldest-old primary care patients (85+; AgeQualiDe)) and was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grants KND: 01GI0102, 01GI0420, 01GI0422, 01GI0423, 01GI0429, 01GI0431, 01GI0433, 01GI0434; grants KNDD: 01GI0710, 01GI0711, 01GI0712, 01GI0713, 01GI0714, 01GI0715, 01GI0716; grants Health Service Research Initiative: 01GY1322A, 01GY1322B, 01GY1322C, 01GY1322D, 01GY1322E, 01GY1322F, 01GY1322G). The publication was also supported by the study ‘Healthy Aging: Gender specific trajectories into latest life’ (AgeDifferent.De) that was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (grants 01GL1714A; 01GL1714B; 01GL1714C; 01GL1714D).