It’s shameful care homes make old folk depressed

THE term ‘ care home’ often seems a cruel joke. For too many residents, these places fail to provide care and are certainly not a home in any sense I recognise.

Instead, they are little more than holding pens where people are sent to wait to die. It’s purgatory, but with flock wallpaper and a smell of burnt toast.

One GP friend of mine refers to them as ‘granny farms’ and I’m afraid that too often I’ve seen the residents treated with little more respect than cattle.

Is it any wonder, then, that a study this week showed that nearly half of all residents of care homes are depressed?

What’s really shocking is that anyone’s surprised. Too many people just assume that being listless and unresponsive and sad are par for the course when you get old. They think that old age is a naturally depressing time and that it’s simply one of those things. So let me be clear: it’s not.

Older people can be happy, deserve to be happy and should be happy.

Depression is a treatable illness so the rates among older residents speak of a fundamental failure by doctors to intervene and help them.

But the buck stops with the care homes. How many of the rest of us actively look forward to spending our last days in one? Be honest: practically none. We value our independence and we want our creature comforts.

We don’t want to be shunted somewhere strange, away from our home, with only a few possessions to remind us of who we once were.

We don’t want to waste our days with no stimulation and no interaction, sitting with heads bowed while daytime TV blares out from the corner of the room. We don’t want to be fed and put to bed at times to suit the staff, not our own body clocks. We don’t want to be patronised, and sometimes brutally abused.

Yet this is the life that so many old people are condemned to. Why is it OK for them, but not for us?

Countless studies have shown that when care home residents are given responsibilities and stimulation — like looking after a pet, or childminding or gardening — the change in their behaviour is astonishing.

They suddenly come alive again, because we are all social animals and we need a reason to get up each morning. That’s what care homes often strip away.

Depressing? Yes. But it should also make us angry — and ashamed we let people live like this and look the other way.