Zeitschrift für Depression und Angst
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Abstrakt

Prevalence of Depression among Geriatric Population in Block Hazratbal, District Srinagar

Umar Nazir, Rouf Hussain Rather, Shazia Benazir, Muhammad Salim Khan S and Hamidullah Shah

Background: Elderly population aged 60 years and above in the world will reach 1.2 billion by the year 2025, the majority of whom will be in developing countries. Major health problems which are faced in this age group are hypertension, CAD, atherosclerosis, strokes, DM, obesity, cancers, cataracts, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, chronic obstructive airway disease, benign hyperplasia of prostate, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, senile Dementia and depression.
Objective: To estimate the prevalence of depression among geriatric population in block Hazratbal, district Srinagar.
Methodology: The 496 elderly subjects were interviewed in their local/Urdu language and they were examined by using a pre-tested, pre-structured study questionnaire. The questionnaire was divided into two parts. The first part comprised of the socio-demographic information which covered a diverse set of parameters such as age, sex, marital status, education, socio-economic status, Non-communicable diseases, living conditions, economic dependency and the dependency for the activities of daily living, impact of turmoil caused due to conflict in the state. In second part Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS 30-item) was used to measure depression in geriatric population in the selected sample population.
Results: In the present study, it was found that 31.5% of elderly were suffering from depression. 27.2% of elderly had Mild depression, whereas only 4.2% had severe depression as males (31.5%) p<0.001. Both the categories of depression were found to be more in elderly females. Prevalence of severe depression in elderly females (7.1%).
Conclusion: Overall prevalence of depression was fairly high among the elderly subjects in this part of the world. Depression was more common in females as compared to males. Advanced age, illiteracy, occupations, marital status, socio-economic class, family pattern, economic dependence, dependence for activities of daily living, children dependency, expected care givers, relationship with spouse are the strong predictors on the prevalence of depression in the elderly.