EC Psychology And Psychiatry

Background: Worldwide, with the rapidly growing elderly population, depression is becoming a major public health problem. Various studies show depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide and is a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease due to increasing aging. Prevalence of depression in elderly is found to around 13% in the community sample in various countries. The associated factors are age, sex, chronic illness, educational status are significant with depression.

Methods: A cross sectional descriptive design study was conducted among elderly by using probability stratified sampling technique. Data were collected using face to face interview technique and Geriatric Depression Scale-Short to assess depression and self-developed questionnaire to assess its associated factors among 274 elderly people. Data analysis was done using statistical program for the social science (SPSS) version 20, which include frequency, percentage, mean, and chi- square test.

Result: Among 279 respondents, 59.1% of respondent had depression. There was association between depression and sex (0.044), educational status (0.004) marital status (0.001) living arrangements (0.002), financial support (0.023) (chronic illness (0.001), death of spouse (0.001), worried of being elderly (0.001).

Conclusion: The present study was concluded that more than half of the respondents had depression and there is significant association between sex, educational status, and marital status, living arrangements, financial support, chronic illness, death of spouse and worried of being elderly. Local authority can conduct awareness program related to geriatric depression and ways to prevent associated factors with involvement of family members to care and support to the elderly people.

 Keywords: Elderly; Geriatric Depression; Geriatric Depression Scale

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