Developing sensory disabilities with age can worsen mental health and loneliness, new research shows, adding to previous findings.
The study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found people with sensory disabilities tended to have worse mental health than those without sensory disabilities.
Those with multiple senses impaired experienced more loneliness and had significantly worse self-reported mental health overall.
People with three sensory disabilities were more likely to experience frequent depressive episodes but overall, there was no significant difference in anxiety scores nor frequent anxiety symptoms.
“We saw that hearing and vision disability tended to be associated with lower self-rated mental health and feelings of loneliness, but olfactory disability had a weaker association,” lead author, University of Chicago medical student Mr Alexander Wang said.
“But we did not find any specific sensory disabilities to be associated with increased anxiety symptoms. Previous work found hearing and visual disabilities to be associated with depressive and anxiety symptoms in older adults. The differences in our studies may be attributable to the difference in time scale of our (longer) analyses.”
The University of Chicago Medicine researchers said most older adults experienced some dulling of their senses with age and began squinting at screens or missing snatches of conversations more and more frequently.
“When your senses decline, you can’t experience the world as well,” said Dr Jayant Pinto, a physician and expert in olfactory dysfunction at UChicago Medicine. “You can’t hear colleagues or friends at the dinner table; you can’t discern what’s going on in your environment; you may have a hard time reading or making things out when you’re in your neighborhood.
“It makes all your cognitive burdens a little harder, and that probably wears you down over time and causes mental health problems.”
The researchers analysed data on vision, hearing and sense of smell and self-reported mental health from nearly 4,000 older adults, collected over 10 years of follow-up as part of the National Social Life, Health & Aging Project.
They said sensory decline contributed to feelings of loneliness, sadness and boredom because older people with vision impairment may have trouble getting out of the house or seeing the faces of their friends and family, and hearing loss could make conversations stilted and frustrating. Even loss of smell could affect someone’s ability to find joy in familiar scents.
Results highlighted the importance of improving access to mental health services and increasing awareness of the connection between sensory loss and mental distress.
Screening for mental health conditions when sensory loss was identified provided opportunities for timely intervention and steps to lessen day-to-day effects of sensory difficulties would lessen their negative mental health implications, they added.
These included technologies and medical interventions for hearing loss including cochlear implants, hearing aids and other hearing-assistive devices which research had indicated could slow cognitive decline and improve quality of life, they said.
For vision loss, there were glasses, contact lenses, cataract surgery and LASIK surgery, along with text-to-speech computer programs and for the sense of smell, health experts could sometimes help by reducing sinus inflammation or conducting smell training exercises.
“In many cases, we can mitigate sensory difficulties in ways that might improve people’s lives, mental health and sense of loneliness — which is a huge epidemic,” Dr Pinto said. “These are simple ways we can intervene to help people and potentially have a huge impact on society.”
The researchers said they used the word “disability” to underscore the significant impact of sensory impairment which aligned with efforts to destigmatise the conditions and promote a more inclusive approach to healthcare. Recognising sensory impairments as disabilities and acknowledging their impact on mental health were important steps toward more comprehensive and compassionate care, they said.
