Melancholia and the third age Professor Simon Gilbody, Hull York Medical School

Event details

Merchant Adventurers’ Science Discovery Lecture

The triumph of the NHS is that many more of us can expect to live longer lives and spend more time in their ‘third age’; that which awaits us after retirement.  The NHS has historically sought to improve physical health and now spends much of its resources on treating long term physical conditions among people in their third age. 

Professor Simon Gilbody leads mental health research at the University of York and the Hull-York Medical School.  In his 2019 Merchant Adventurers' lecture ‘Melancholia and the Third Age’ Professor Gilbody will argue that the NHS needs to optimise psychological health as well as physical health for older people.  The two cannot be separated, and the NHS ignores one at the expense of the other.  The most common mental health problem in the third age is depression.  In days gone by depression was known as melancholia, and was thought by Hippocrates to be inexorably linked to physical health through an imbalance of the humours.  We can learn much from the Greeks!

Professor Gilbody is a leading population scientist and practicing NHS doctor.  He leads some of the most important research in the UK into mental health among older people.  He will speak about the importance of good mental health in the third age and how problems like depression or anxiety can be treated or even prevented.  His internationally-recognised research is conducted in Yorkshire, is funded from the public purse and informs care in the NHS.