Psychosocial Assessment of Patients Attending Geriatrics OPD at Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad
Keywords:
geriatric, geriatric depression scale, perceived health statusAbstract
Background: Health status is an important factor that has a sig- nificant impact on the quality of life of an elderly population. The aim of the study is to determine the medical, psychological and social characteristics among geriatric patients.
Methods: A hospital based study was conducted in Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad. The patients aged 65 years and above were included in the geriatrics outpatient department. The geriatric patients were interviewed during their geriatric clinic visit using a structured questionnaire regarding their socio-demographic characteristics, addiction history, perceived health status and a short version of the geriatric depression scale.
Results: Depression was found in 31.5% of the patients. It was due to combined effect of sedentary life style, medication used and greater number of reported symptoms. Not due to difference in gender, age group, loss of spouse, employment, educational status & living arrangement.
Conclusions: In order to improve the health status of the geriatric patients it is important to carry out more studies in different areas to identify various factors that are related to psychological distress and disability, which should lead to efforts to develop effective programmes in disease prevention.
References
Hafez G, Bagchi K, Badr A. Ageing populations of the East- ern Mediterranean Region: a challenge for health care sys- tems. Health services journal of the Eastern Mediterranean Region, WHO, 1992, 6:15.
Gijsen R, Hoeymans N, Schellevis F, Ruwaard D, Satariano W, Van den Bos G. Causes and consequences of comorbidi- ty: A review. J Clin Epidemiol. 2001; 54:661–74.
Harrison S et al. Assessing the needs of the elderly using unsolicited visits by health visitors. Journal of the Royal So- ciety of Medicine. 1985;78:557–61.
Arie T. Prevention of mental disorders of old age. Journal of the American Geriatric Patients Society. 1984;32:460–5.
Pathy MS et al. Randomised trial of case finding and sur- veillance of elderly people at home. Lancet. 1992;340:890–3.
Morely JE. Geriatric update. Saudi medical journal. 1989;10:15–20.
Allen N et al. A brief sensitive screening instrument for de- pression in late life. Age and ageing. 1994;23:213–8.
Hafez G, Bagchi K, Badr A. Ageing populations of the East- ern Mediterranean Region: a challenge for health care sys- tems. Health services journal of the Eastern Mediterranean Region WHO. 1992, 6:15.
Morely JE. Geriatric update. Saudi medical journal, 1989, 10:15–20.
Prakash IJ. Health and morbidity in later years. Psycho- Social Gerontology: Training Material For Mental Health Professionals. 1999: 6–8.
Rajan SI, Misra US, Sarma PS. The Living Conditions of the Elderly People. India’s Elderly. Delhi: Sage Publication. 1999:211–50.
Sunder L, Chadha SL, Bhatia PC. A study on senior citizens in rural areas. Health for the Millions. 1999;25:18–20.
Purty AJ, Bazroy J, Kar M, Vasudevan K, Veliath A, Panda
P. Morbidity Pattern among the elderly population in the rural area of Tamil Nadu, India. Turk J Med Sci. 2006;36:45– 50.
Hafez G, Bagchi K, eds. Health care for the elderly: a man- ual for primary health care workers. Alexandria, World Health Organization Regional Office for the Eastern Medi- terranean, 1994 (WHO Regional publications, Eastern Medi- terranean Series 10).
Livingston G, Hawkins A, Graham N, Blizard B, Mann A. The Gospel Oak Study: Prevalence rates of dementia, de- pression and activity limitation among elderly residents in inner London. Psychol Med. 1990;20:137‑46.
Copeland JR, Dewey ME, Wood N, Searle R, Davidson IA, McWilliam C. Range of mental illness among the elderly in the community. Prevalence in liverpool using the GMS‑ AGECAT package. Br J Psychiatry. 1987;150:815‑23.
Abolfotouh MA, Daffallah AA, Khan MY, Khattab MS, Ab- dulmoneim I. Psychosocial assessment of geriatric subjects in Abha City, Saudi Arabia. East Mediterr Health J. 2001;7:481‑91.
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.
