UHG Report Highlights Mental Healthcare Needs Among Seniors

Over the last decade, seniors have experienced rising rates of mental healthcare needs, drug-related deaths, and early mortality, the UnitedHealth Foundation’s 2022 Senior Report shows.

“The 2022 Senior Report shows that the wellbeing of older adults was declining before the pandemic, which we know exacerbated many of these challenges,” Rhonda Randall, DO, executive vice president and chief medical officer of UnitedHealthcare Employer and Individual, said in the press release. 

“We urge people to help the seniors in your lives reconnect with the communities and activities they have enjoyed in the past but may not yet have returned to. We are focused on reducing disparities in the health care system for everyone, including older Americans.”

The report primarily relied on data from 2020 and later. UnitedHealth Group drew this data from 21 data sources including tools and systems from CMS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to the full report. The report addressed five categories of health by assessing data from 62 measures in order to rank states’ senior care.

Mental and behavioral health among seniors suffered. Suicide rates rose 13 percent in the last decade. Despite payers’ efforts, almost 9,240 more seniors died from intentional self-harm in the 2018 to 2020 timeframe than in the 2009 to 2011 timeframe.

Depression diagnoses rose nine percent from 2011 to 2020. Frequent mental health distress also grew more rampant. Slightly more than 8 percent of seniors stated that their mental health was not in good condition for 14 or more of the past 30 days in 2020, compared to 7.5 percent in 2011. This represents an 8 percent increase.

The drug-related death rate jumped 147 percent over the past decade for individuals ages 65 to 74 and 100 percent for all seniors 65 years old and older. The rate doubled from 4.2 deaths per 100,000 seniors in the 2008 to 2010 timeframe to 8.4 deaths in 2020.

Connecticut, Maryland, and New Jersey saw the highest increases in drug-related death rates, with the first two states seeing an increase of more than 300 percent.

The prevalence of drug-related deaths also fell along racial lines, indicating a need for greater health equity and eliminating care disparities for seniors.

Black seniors had the highest rates of drug-related deaths in the 2018 to 2020 timeframe. Seniors in the Black community were 10.4 times more likely to die of a drug-related death than the racial population with the lowest drug-related death rate, the Asian community.

Seniors in minority groups were more likely to experience early death in 2019 and 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic broke out in the US. The early death rate for Hispanic populations rose 48 percent between 2019 and 2020, while the national average rose 17 percent.

however, researchers also found some positive trends among seniors related to health status and flu vaccination rates. 

The share of seniors who reported very good or excellent health rose by 13 percent between 2011 and 2020 from 38 percent to 43 percent. There was a particularly strong rise in reported health status from 2019 to 2020, with a growth rate of 6 percent. 

Similarly, the 2021 America’s Health Rankings Report found that more Americans overall reported strong health status, despite the pandemic.

While the flu vaccination rate has not yet hit the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Healthy People 2030 goal, it is approaching the government’s aim. The goal is to have 70 percent of seniors vaccinated against the flu by 2030. In 2020, 67.3 percent of seniors were vaccinated against the flu. 

This statistic may fall short of the overall goal, but it nevertheless represents a significant leap forward as this is the highest rate that the US has achieved in the history of the Senior Report.

Given all of these factors, the 2022 Senior Report identified Utah, Vermont, and Minnesota as the states with the best senior health rankings, while Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi had the lowest senior health rankings.

“As the nation continues to address the pandemic’s effects, we must also prioritize long-standing challenges and disparities in senior health — especially behavioral health — that emerged over the last decade and were potentially exacerbated by COVID-19,” the report concluded.