A survey of anxiety and depression among elderly people referred to health center of Larestan in 2019

Abstract

Introduction: Elderly people face many challenges and these problems make them vulnerable to various types of mental disorders. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the level of anxiety and depression in the elderly people who referred to the health center of Larestan city in 2019. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 109 elderly people were selected by convenience sampling from health center of Larestan city. Demographic information, Beck Depression Inventory and Spielberger Anxiety Questionnaire were completed by the samples. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using Spearman, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. In this study, a p-value of 0.05 was considered as statistically significant . Results: Out of 109 elderly people who participated in this study, 47 (43.1%) were male and 62 (56.9%) were female. The mean age of the men and women was 65.30±5.013 and 69.34±5.675 years, respectively. Most of the samples were married (79.80%) and illiterate (43.10%). The mean of depression, state and trait anxiety in men was 11.79±5.91, 33.02±11.56 and 34.19±13.50 respectively; also, the mean of depression, state and trait anxiety in women was 15.31±6.65, 40.68±12.44 and 40.82±12.29, respectively. The results of Mann-Whitney U test showed a statistically significant relationship between gender and the level of depression, state and trait anxiety (P value0.05). Conclusion: The findings of this study indicate the high prevalence of depression and anxiety among the elderly under the study, especially among the elderly women; therefore, interventions are needed to reduce the stressors of the elderly people's lives.

Keywords

• anxiety
• depression
• elderly