A Study of Depression among Elderly As Affected By Their Gender and Residential Locale: Age Developmental Analysis

The overall depressive disorders occurrence rate in elderly people is estimated to be between 10% – 20% based on their cultural background, by the World Health Organization (Rangaswamy Sm (ed), 2001 & Wig NN.2001).

There have been mental health studies done in India based on the community, which show the occurrence rate of depressive disorders among elderly people is between 10% – 25%. (Nandi DN, Ajamany S, Ganguli H, Banerjee G, Boral GC, Ghosh A, et al. 1976., Ramachandran V, Menon sarada M, Arunagiri S. 1982).

There have been various studies showing that elderly people have higher rate of having psychological problems, depression being then most common in geriatric psychiatric disorders. The elderly people living in India experience variety of psychological, social, and physical health problems. As mentioned earlier about depression being most common among geriatric psychiatric disorders, it is due to many depressive factors such as life events that affect psychological status of a person. Also with the growing age, the chances of functional loss and morbidity increase as well. Sir James Sterling had said that you do not heal the old age, you protect it, you promote it, and you extend it. In the world of Seneca it has been said that old age is an incurable disease. These are the basic principles that preventive medicine follows. There would be 2 per 1000 patients in the country needing the psychiatric institutional treatment estimated by the Bhore Committee (Report of Health Survey and Development Committee, New Delhi: Govt. of India, 1946).