A Community Based Study of Depression and Its Risk Factors among Geriatric Population Inperiurban Areas of Tamilnadu
Keywords:
Depression, Geriatric, risk factor, ols age, stressAbstract
Background: Geriatric depression is an important public health problem. There is a dearth of community studies from India investigating geriatric depression and its associated risk factors. This study aimed to establish the prevalence and factors associated with geriatric depression in asemiurbanpopulation of Melmaruvathur.
Methods: This was a community based cross sectional study conducted in semiurban areas of Melmaruvathur. 200 individuals in the geriatric age group were randomly selectedand were interviewedusing standard Geriatric depression scale and the result wasanalyzed using the statistical software SPSS 20.
Results: Prevalence of geriatric depression was 65% with 14.5% mild and 50.5% with severe depression. Depression was significantly associated with elders in the age group of 60-69 years. The proportion of severe depression was significantly higher among those participants whose spouse had expired (85.56% vs 14.44%). The proportion of depression was significantly higher among the elders who gave a previous history (92.13%) of depression. The proportion of elders who require home care was also significantly associated with depression.
Conclusions: Geriatric depression is highly prevalent in thesemiurbanareas of Melmaruvathur. Age, status of spouse, previous history of depression, elders whorequires home care was the significant factors that was associated with depression in geriatric population.
References
Medical Encyclopedia. Depression-elderly. Retrieved Oc-tober 31, 2008, from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus /ency/article/001521.htm#Definition.
National Institute of Mental Health. (2004). Depression Re-search at the National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved October 30, 2008, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/ publi-cat/depresfact.cfm.
Lee M, Choi EK, Jung IK, KwakDI.Epidemiological study of geriatric depression in aKorean urban area. Korean Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2000;6:154–163.
Lee Y,ShinkaiS.Correlates of cognitive impairment and de-pressive symptoms among olderadults in Korea and Japan. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2005;20:576–586.
Chiu HC, ChenCM, Huang CJ, Mau LW. Depressive symp-toms, chronic medical conditionsand functional status:A comparison of urban and rural elders in Taiwan. Interna-tional Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 2005;20:635–44.
UN population Division: World population prospects, the 2000 revision. New York: United Nations publication; 2001, www.un.org/spanish/esa/population/wpp2000h.pdf
Rangaswamy SM, editor. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2001. The World Health Organization (WHO). World Health Report: Mental Health: New Under-standing New Hope, www.who.int/whr/2001/en/whr 01_en.pdf
Wig NN. World Health Day, 2001. Indian J Psychiatry. 2001; 43:1–4.
Nandi DN, Ajmany S, Ganguli H, Banergee G, Boral GC, Ghosh A et al. The incidence of mental disorders in one year in a rural community in West Bengal, Indian J Psychia-try. 1976;18:79-87
Ramachandran V, Menon SM, Arunagiri S, Socio-cultural factors in late onset depression.Indian J Psychiatry. 1982;24:268-273
Rajkumar AP, Thangadurai P, Senthilkumar P, Gayathri, Prince M, Jacob KS. Nature, prevalence and factors associat-ed with depression among the elderly in a rural south Indi-an community. IntPsychogeriatr. 2009;21(2):372–378
Sherry A. The Geriatric depressive Scale – Short form. AJN 2007 Oct; 107(4):60-69.
Nandi PS, Banerjee G, Mukherjee SP, Nandi S, Nandi DN. A study of psychiatric morbidity of the elderly population of a rural community in West Bengal. Indian J psychiatry. 1997; 39:122-9
Lindesay J, Briggs K, Murphy E. The Guy's / Age concern survey: Prevalence rates of cognitive impairment, depres-sion and anxiety in an urban elderly population. Br J Psy-chiatry. 1989;155:332–8
Beekman AT, Copeland JR, Prince MJ. Review of communi-ty prevalence of depression in later life. Br J Psychiatry. 1999;17(4):307–11.
Ham BJ, Kim JK, Cho MJ. The prevalence, incidence, and risk factors of dementia and depressive disorders of the el-derly residing in the community: A two stage one-year fol-low-up study.Korean Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 1999;3:140–148
Kim JM, Shin IS, Yoon JS, Stewart R. A comparison of the prevalence and correlates of latelife depression in urban and rural populations in Korea. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatr. 2002;17:409–15.
Wada T, Ishine M, Sakagami T, Okumiya K, Fujisawa M. Murakami S. Depression in Japanese community-dwelling elderly prevalence and association with ADL and QOL. Ar-chives of Gerontology and Geriatric. 2004;39:15–23.
Chong MY, Tsang HY, Chen CS, Tang TC, Chen CC, Yeh TL. Community study of depression in old age in Taiwan: Prevalence, life events and socio-demographic correlates. The British Journal of Psychiatry. 2001;178:29–35.
Gao S, Jin Y, Unverzagt FW, Liang C, Hall K. Ma SF. Corre-lates of depressive symptoms in rural elderly Chinese. Ger-iatric Psychiatry. 2009;doi: 10.1002/gps.2271.
Arthur A, Jagger C, Lindesay J, Graham C, Clarke M. Using an annual over-75 health check to screen for depression: val-idation of the short Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS15) within general practice. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 1999;14:431–9.
Korner A. et al. Rating scales for depression in the elderly: external and internal validity, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 2007;68:384–9.
Gautam R, Saito T, Kai I. Leisure and religious activity par-ticipation and mental health:Gender analysis of older adults in Nepal. Retrieved from http://www.biomedcentral.com /1471-2458/7/299. BMC Public Health. 2007; doi: 10.1186 /1471-24587-299.
Jacob KS, SenthilKumar P, Gayathri K, Abraham S, Prince MJ. The diagnosis of dementia in the community. Interna-tional Psychogeriatrics. 2007;19:669–78
Heath I. Commentary: there must be limits to the medicali-sation of human distress. BMJ.1999;318:439–40
Kessler D, Lloyd K, Lewis G, Gray DP. Cross sectional study of symptom attribution and recognition of depression and anxiety in primary care. BMJ. 1999;318:436–9.
Bharatwaj RS, Vijaya K, Rajaram P. Prevalence of Urban Geriatric Depression - A Cross sectional Study in Pondi-cherry. Int J Med Health Sci. 2013;2(3):286-91.
Sin MK, LoGerfo J, Belza B, Cunningham S. Factors influ-encing exercise participation and quality of life among el-derly Korean Americans. Journal of Cultural Diversity. 2004;11: 139–145.
Demura S, Sato S. Relationships between depression, life-style and quality of life in the community dwelling elderly: A comparison between gender and age groups. Journal of Physiological Anthropology and Applied Human Science. 2003;22:159–166.
Deshpande SS, Gadkari M, Raje SS. Screening for depres-sion and its risk factors in geriatric population: A rural community based study. Asian J Psychiatr. 2011 Dec;4(4):284-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ajp.2011.08.001. Epub 2011 Oct 13.
Cole MG, Dendukuri N. Risk factors for depression among elderly community subjects: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Am J Psychiatry. 2003 Jun;160(6):1147-56.
Kono A, Kai I, Sakato C, Rubenstein LZ. Frequency of going outdoors: a predictor of functional and psychological change among ambulatory frail elders living at home. The Journals of Gerontology,Series A, Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences. 2004;59:275–80.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.
