What older people do about their day-to-day mental and physical health symptoms.

In four detailed "yesterday" interviews, old people (n = 132) were studied to identify their day-to-day mental and physical symptoms. Previous reports have described the nature, frequency, and severity of the symptoms reported. This paper describes the actions taken by old people to alleviate discomfort from their symptoms. Some action was taken to treat four fifths of the complaints but virtually none of the symptoms were reported to health care professionals. Among the authors' findings are that about 20 per cent of the drug doses taken by the interviewees could not be identified and the remaining 80 per cent were divided equally between prescription drugs and over-the-counter medications. It is evident that there is a world of day-to-day health experiences and practices of which health care professionals are unaware. Sensitive questioning is needed to elicit information about that world from elderly patients, who in turn are often in considerable need of health education from professional sources.