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Many associations are found between cognition and anxiety at all age levels. This linkage may be especially salient among elderly adults.
For example, memory lapses may induce anxiety that is out of proportion to the incidents themselves.
Furthermore, the increasingly widespread awareness of Alzheimer’s disease has so sensitized some middle-aged and elderly adults that they may interpret “garden variety” forgetfulness as a pathognomic sign of a progressive dementing disease.
In helping people cope with this source of anxiety, one should not underestimate the difficulties involved in making accurate assessments of Alzheimer-type disorders early in their course, nor be unaware of the variety of other organic and functional explanations for memory lapses.
Withdrawal from activities and relationships may also be consequences of anxiety about one’s ability to perform cognitive tasks.
Elderly people may fear humiliation or failure because they no longer trust their ability to learn new names and other facts, process information rapidly and reliably, and retrieve knowledge from memory on demand.
One or two adverse experiences may lead to a loss of self-confidence and start a cycle of withdrawal and depression. “Test anxiety” is a variation of this concern.
“Flights into senility” may occur when an elderly person feels unable to cope with change, stress, and threat. The apparent inability to comprehend reality proves at times to be a strategy intended to protect one from a hostile or overwhelming reality.
