Prevalence of Depression among the Geriatric Age Group Population of Rural Central India and Study of Dependency as a Risk Factor

Introduction: Depression in the elderly has disastrous implications that not only lowers quality of life, but it also has an impact on the prognosis of other chronic conditions, exacerbating disability. As estimated by WHO, depression occurs in 7% of the general elderly population and the same in India is 9.3%. This study was undertaken to know the prevalence of depression among the geriatric age group with Dependency as risk factor in villages of our field practice area. Methodology: It’s a Cross sectional study of 251 geriatric population. The selection of villages was done through Simple random sampling and all the villagers of age above 60 years were included in the study. The identification of depression was carried out using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The dependency was calculated using the Barthel Index Results: From our study it is found that the prevalence of depression and dependency among the geriatric population in our study area is 43% and 29% respectively. The Barthel score among depressed were also less(median (IQR) Barthel score: depressed - 65(50,85) ; not depressed -70(60,89); p value -