A Study to Assess Geriatric Depression Among Elderly People Residing in Old Age Homes at Rural Areas of Tumkur at Karnataka

Geriatric population is challenged by many psychiatric morbidities and co-morbidities like depression being the most predominant. Deprivation in health status especially in the psychological aspects and psychological health problems are all associated with aging. Across India, old age home based studies have estimated the prevalence of depression amongst the elderly in urban areas, but there are only a few such studies done in rural old age home settings. The need of the present research was to study and determine the prevalence of Geriatric depression amongst the elderly population, 60 years or more of age, in a rural area of Tumkur district Karnataka, India. This was a cross sectional descriptive study conducted in a rural old age homes in Tumkur, Karnataka, India. Out of the total population of 5037, geriatric was 554. Out of these 554 people, only 80 samples were taken for pilot study.Rural old age homes are visited and survey done for collection of data by using a pre-designed and pre-validated 30 item Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), developed by Yesavage JA in 1983. In this study, the overall prevalence of depression in elderly in the study population was estimated to be 62.16%. Coming to the conclusion of the study, prevalence of depression in the present study, amongst elderly population in a rural old age homes was found to be high which shows that the quality of health care services presently to the elderly need improvement