Integrative Treatment Of Senile Depression

There are many countries take the Geriatrics seriously for the sake of much longer average life span of modern people. The depression becomes one of the three hygiene topics that threaten human health in the 21st century. According to the estimation of disease burden investigated by World Health Organization (WHO), the depression is going to be the second place of all diseases in 2020. However, most of the research reports on epidemiology show up that the prevalence rate of aged depressive symptoms is higher than the prevalence rate of the aged depression. Therefore, the subject is to study about the related to epidemiological research of aged depressive status including the aged depression; the realization, pathogenic factors & pathogenic changes, syndrome differentiation and therapy by the standpoint of traditional Chinese medicine; the realization, the study of pathologic changes, the standard of diagnosis, differential diagnosis, and principle of therapy by Western medicine, as well as current condition of aged depressive status treated by the combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. For the sake of efficacy raise and side effects reduce by Western medicine only; it mostly has been treated by traditional Chinese medicine or acupuncture with the smaller dosage of Western medicine. Otherwise, there are still lots of issues need to solve about the combination of traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine for the therapy of aged depression include: the standard of syndrome differentiation, the screen of efficacious medicines and formula of drugs of TCM, value the overlapping study among differentiation types and lay down the standard of efficacy. Then it will conduce to the evidence-based study of aged depressive symptoms treated by the combination of traditional Chinese and Western medicine.The Western medicine fails to offer an objective view, rapid screening tool for examination on aged depressive status, we try first to make use of energy medicine device to screen with meridian energy analysis device, MEAD. In the clinical implementation, we research on aged depressive status with the possibility of more objective view and speedy way for screening use. The subjects studied were 70 old people aged more than 65, the purpose of this study is to analysis the correlation between measurement on Geriatrics Depression Scale, GDS and the result of MEAD. The result reveals the correlation between the deviation of liver meridian and the assessment score of GDS is positive significant (P<0.01). The ratio between the total value of electric conduction of yin and yang meridians and the score of GDS show a negative correlation (P<0.05). This result may be interpreted that the binding depression of liver qi is the major pathological change of depression and also conspired with the deficiency of zang qi is the important internal predisposed factor of aged depressive symptoms. From the result of this study, we learn that MEAD, possibly becomes an objective and auxiliary screening tool for the aged depressive status in the clinic.