Introduction: Aging is a word used for decreased life abilities with diminished biological morbid. Emotional disorders make up a group of late - life mental disorders. The most common disorder in elderly is depression. Statistical data show that about 20% of American elderly have depression who are usually misdiagnosed and don’t receive proper treatment and this disturbs their life process knowing socio - demographic factors and elderly depression can help nurses to better assess their needs and pay more attention to elderly depression.
Objective: The aim is to determine the level of depression and its relationship with socio - demographic characteristics in Rasht city in 2007. Methods: This is a correlational descriptive study and 100 samples were randomly chosen from elderly of superannuated government employed center. The data collection instrument consisted of a two part questionnaire. The first part included twenty personal demographic questions and 11 questions regarding social characteristics. The second part included DVYSS standard depression scale with 30 questions, which is a two point test in two levels of “Yes” and “No” response and 5 ± 4 score indicates normal, 15 ± 6 show mild depression and 23 ± 5 is sever depression. Finally, the study data were analyzed by descriptive – analylitic statistics and SPSS software.
Results: Finding showed that 45.3% of samples had mild and sever depression. Depression is elderly had a significant relationship with married statues (p<0.007), satisfaction with place of living (p<0.000), use of medicine (p<0.006), living with spouse and children (p<0.0005), emotional support of family, members (p<0.01), emotional support of friends (p<0.01), emotional support of others (p<0.04), satisfaction with relations (p<0.001) and satisfaction with overall support (p<0.01).
Conclusion: Current study demonstrates that a significant number of elderly suffer from depression and factors such as drug use, lack of satisfaction with place of living, loneliness, low family, friends and others, emotional support, lack of satisfaction with communication and support are effective in establishing depression.
Rights and permissions | |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. |