Psychoeducational workshops for elderly patients with recurrent major depression and their families

This report details an extension of the use of psychoeducational workshops with psychiatric patients and their families to families of elderly patients with recurrent unipolar late-life depression.

Subjects were 132 participants in a study of maintenance therapies for late-life depression and their 182 family members and significant others who accepted invitations to single-session family workshops. Participants provided feedback on their satisfaction with the content and quality of the workshops. Associations between workshop attendance, preworkshop demographic and clinical characteristics, treatment adherence, and outcome were explored through comparisons between 108 patients who attended workshops and 24 patients who declined the workshop invitation.

Favorable feedback from participants suggested that the extension of the workshops to families of elderly patients with depression was successful. Workshop attendance was associated with a lower rate of dropout during continuation treatment.

Results associating workshop refusal and treatment dropout, as well as the overall treatment compliance and retention rates in this randomized clinical trial involving geriatric patients, support the need for further study of factors relating to elderly patients' willingness to engage in family-centered interventions.