The Psychological Impact of Falls on Seniors

Most people know that an elderly person’s fall can have serious consequences. Even a person who isn’t aware of the statistics around falls can guess that the frailty, slower reflexes and weaker bones that come with ageing can lead to more significant harms from a fall.

Understanding these aspects of falls in the elderly is intuitive. However, there’s another part of the story that’s not so easy to guess.

Falls in older people can have very significant psychological effects. And if you’re an older person or caring for one, it’s crucial to know how those effects work so that you can help avert them.

In this post, we’ll discuss exactly how falls can cause harm to mental health and what steps can be taken to prevent that harm.

The basics of falls

It’s important to know that falls in the elderly are very common. According to the NHS’s resources on falls, one-third of over-65s fall each year, and the proportion only grows higher within older age groups.

Within that one-third of elderly people who fall, half of those seniors are what doctors term ‘recurrent fallers,’ meaning that they fall twice or more every year. According to the US Center for Disease Control, people who have fallen one time are twice as likely to fall another time.

In some cases, these repeated falls are all due to an underlying cause, such as muscle weakness, loss of balance, poor vision or medication side effects. In other cases, the physical injury from a fall could make a person less steady on their feet and more likely to fall again.

But some of those second falls are due to the psychological impacts of the first fall. In fact, a fall can affect an older person mentally in more than one way that will increase their chances of falling again.

Fear of falling

One major potential consequence of falls in older people is a fear of falling again. In fact, even older people who haven’t fallen can begin to suffer this fear. But it’s crucial that older people work to prevent this fear from controlling what they do in their daily lives. Being able to take action to reduce the chances of harm from falling can feel empowering and help to combat fear. Later in this post, we’ll discuss some clear steps that older people can take to lower their risk of falls.

Avoidance of activities

The fear that can result after a fall may lead an older person to restrict what they do in an effort to not fall again. This restriction can lead to further psychological harms as the elderly person loses out on social contact and feels a lack of freedom because they believe they are not able to walk and move as they wish.

Dwindling strength

Now we can see the chain reaction that a fall can trigger. Fear leads to less activity, and less activity simply means a lack of using muscles – which causes weakness. In the elderly, muscle wasting can be a significant issue, which is why it’s so necessary for seniors to keep moving.

And what happens when an older person is physically weaker and moving fearfully? That’s right – another fall.

Altered gait and ways of walking

A severe fear of falling can produce an altered gait in an older person. This response to falling is part of a group of potential reactions, including the ones above, that is referred to as ‘post-fall syndrome.’

An older person with post-fall syndrome may walk differently in a way that they feel they can’t control. For example, their strides and steps may be shorter and smaller. They may be drawn to walk next to walls and other objects they can lean on or touch for stability. In some cases, they may be able to walk while touching a supportive object like a wall, but unable to walk when not touching anything.

In short, the person suffering from this condition no longer has faith in their own ability to walk without falling. It’s key to note that these changes are not a choice. They’re a real psychological condition that can’t be addressed just by willpower.

Combatting the physical and psychological effects of falls

Post-fall syndrome can be addressed through therapies, including physical therapy. This is one reason why the NHS has created specifically dedicated falls prevention services throughout the UK. If you think you might need this type of service, see our post on getting a falls risk assessment.

Ideally, of course, it’s best to prevent the psychological harms of falls from ever occurring at all.

This can be done in many ways, including the falls risk assessment. Home safety checklists, for example, are a useful tool for ensuring homes have as few fall-producing factors as possible. Fall prevention services can also consider the elderly person’s health and how it interacts with their risk of falling.

Averting a ‘long lie’

Since it’s not possible to prevent all falls, even with the best possible efforts, a personal alarm for the elderly with fall detection is also a crucially important tool for preventing another severe consequence of falls – a ‘long lie.”

A long lie occurs when an older person falls and is unable to get up from the ground or floor for an hour or more. This experience can have many serious physical consequences that are separate from the immediate effects of the fall. In other words, an older person may have bruises from their fall but hypothermia and dehydration from a long lie.

As you would expect, lying on the floor and feeling helpless is also not beneficial psychologically. But getting a personal alarm with fall detection is a strong move to reduce this risk.

This type of technology uses several sensors, measuring details like air pressure to guess when it is sensing a fall. If it believes a fall has happened, it calls for help all by itself. That’s helpful in situations where an older person has fainted or struck their head when they fall and is unconscious.

While this tech can never be 100% perfect, it offers seniors a great chance to feel peace of mind about the possibility of a fall. Another layer of protection comes from the SOS one-touch button that is included on some fall detection alarms. This feature allows older people to press and hold a single button to call for help.

Gain peace of mind and reduce anxiety about falls with SureSafe

At SureSafe, keeping seniors safe in the event of falls is our core goal. That’s why our fall detection alarms are such an effective part of a strategy to reduce anxieties about falling in seniors. For more peace of mind, take a look at our excellent reviews, including our high Trustpilot rating.

If you’re curious to know more, our experts are ready to chat and answer any questions you might have about fall detection alarms. You can get in touch by phone at 0808 189 1671, through live chat or by requesting a call back.