Economic Dependency and Depression in Elderly

Abstract

Background: Aging has become greatest challenge globally. In developing countries including India elderly population (persons aged 60 years and above) is projected to outpace the rich world resulting in 50-80 percent of them expected to be staying in resource constraint countries. By 2050 of the total population more than 20 percent will be elderly. Depressive illness associated with dementia is one of the important problems in elderly. With increase in longevity there will be sharp rise in old age dependency ratio which can drain the resources in any country due to expenditure on health, social security and education. Aim & Objectives: The present study was carried out to assess the extent of degree of depression in elderly and study the associated factors like economic dependency. Material and Methods: Randomly selected subjects were administered the questionnaire of Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), in the Geriatric Clinic of a tertiary care hospital, to categorize them based on the scores, into mild, moderate and severe. Some of the factors were studied and analysed to nd out their association with depression like working status, socioeconomic status and economic dependency. Results: Proportion of elderly having depression was 52.4% with females outnumbering males. Depression seems to be more in those elderly who were not working, were from low socioeconomic status and not having pension as 38.6% who had no pension were depressed. Moderate to severe depression was more in economically dependent (20%) as compared to those who were independent nancially. Conclusion: Economic dependency seems to be important associated factor responsible for depression in elderly along with other factors like socioeconomic status, pension status etc. Implementation of adequate health services and social security system is needed to prevent the marginalization of elderly.

Keywords

• Elderly depression
• GDS
• Economic dependency.