Old age depression: An increasing phenomenon

Pages: 1685-1687
Anjana Bhattacharjee, Ivan Das, and Jayasree Roy (Department of Psychology, Tripura University, Tripura)

Geriatric depression has been affecting lots of older adults, which reduces their quality of life, their levels of happiness and also diminishes their life expectancies. The present study aims to explore and compare the depression levels among the elderly people living in old age homes and their families. 100 elderly people, between the age group of 60 to 90 years were selected for the study, 50 (35 males, 15 females) of whom resides with their respective families and the other 50, who were all females, resides in old age homes for at least past one year. Beck’s Depression Inventory- II (BDI-II) by Beck (1961) was employed to assess depression. The scores were analyzed using Mean, S.D., t-test, Pearson ‘r’ correlation and Simple Linear Regression. The results revealed that depression in elderly people living in old age homes are significantly higher than those living with their families. There exists significant prediction of the place of residence and gender on the levels of depression of the elderly people.