Depression and Cognitive Functions in Elderly: A Community Based Study in Rural Area of Haryana

In India, most of the elderly live in the rural areas and the access to the health care facilities are not up to the mark. The depressive symptoms at this age sometime can be consider as on “normal” continuum and can be viewed as normal response to stress/psychosocial stress including age too by this age group, their family members and even by primary health care providers. There are enormous opportunities for alleviating depression among old age people if it is diagnosed and managed at early stage. There is scarcity of literature of community studies about depression among elderly in India. Taking into consideration the above factors, this study was conducted in a rural area with the objective to study the assess the depression and cognitive functions in elderly. For this purpose: in the present study, a sample of 20 elderly people who attended the camp organized by society for rural mental health (SRMH) at rural area of Haryana assessed on mini mental status examination and geriatric depression rating scale. Pearson r and Independent sample t-test was applied on obtained data. Results indicate that age was not correlated with depression whereas significantly negatively correlated-0.61 (p < 0.01) with MMSE score. Therefore one can conclude that late life depression often leads to cognitive decline which further could be a maintaining factor of depression.