When I teach about mental health and aging, one of the most common questions I hear is: “Do GLP-1 medications like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) actually lower dementia risk?”  As a geropsychologist, I’m curious about this too, especially as more of my patients and the clinicians…

In my more than 20 years providing therapy to dementia caregivers, I often hear some version of:  “Around other people they’re pleasant and conversational, but with me they just shut down or get short-tempered. They could treat me differently if they wanted to.” The truth…

For more than 20 years as a Geropsychologist, I’ve received calls from people searching for a therapist for an older loved one — or a colleague looking for a referral. They weren’t asking for anything extraordinary. They wanted someone who understood depression in later life,…

I’ve been providing psychotherapy to older adults for more than 20 years. And one of the things that has never stopped breaking my heart is how often older adults do not get the mental health care they need, resulting in unnecessary suffering. Depression that goes…

In the field of geropsychology, it is well known that depression is both a risk factor for and an early symptom of dementia. One of the most consistently missed diagnoses I see in clinical practice with older adults is depression in the context of dementia.…

I think about a therapist who had been meeting with an older client every Tuesday for nearly a year. At first, the changes were easy to explain away: a missed appointment here, a repeated story there, a moment of losing track in the middle of…

A family member calls asking you to see their older loved one who’s living with dementia. In psychotherapy with adults, that call raises red flags. Who is the client? Who holds the decision-making authority? Where do the boundaries fall? But with older adults navigating life-altering…

The signs are hard to miss. Your mother used to balance her checkbook to the penny — now the bills are going unpaid. Your father, who has driven the same route to the grocery store for 30 years, called you last Tuesday because he got…

When a family member starts asking the same question three times in an hour, or gets lost driving a route they’ve taken for thirty years, what follows is often a combination of fear (what if something horrible happens?) and uncertainty (what do we do about…

You may still remember the exact words the clinician used. “Dementia.” “Alzheimer’s disease.” “Probable Lewy body dementia.” For many families, everything after that becomes a blur. The fear is real. The uncertainty is real. And so is this: there are clear, concrete steps you can…

A dementia diagnosis is one of the most disorienting moments a person — or a family — can face. The fear is real. The uncertainty is real. And so is this: there are clear, concrete steps you can take right now to protect your health,…

A clinician in my Mental Health + Aging Certificate program recently asked a question. He was reflecting on the opening module — the one where I lay the foundation for who we are providing therapy for, where I explore intersecting identities, share important statistics, and…