Socio demographic predictors of depression among the elderly patients attending out patient departments of a tertiary hospital in North India

Depression is the most common geriatric psychiatric disorder. Other than organic, socio demographic factors, have been found to play an important role in mental health. In this study we evaluated the association of some socio-demographic factors with geriatric depression. A cross sectional study was carried out in the Out Patient Department registration area of a tertiary care teaching hospital in Delhi. Questionnaire based interviews were conducted among the elderly people visiting the hospital. A 15 item geriatric depression scale Hindi was used to assess depression. Six hundred and seventy eight subjects were interviewed. The age of the subjects ranged from 65 to 85 years. About three fourth of the study population were males. About 61.4% scored positive for depression. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that the following were significant [P<0.05] independent predictors of depression: Higher age, low educational status, financial dependence and presence of any chronic health problem. The present study found that the prevalence of depression among the study subjects was high. Also the independent risk factors found in this study need to be targeted in formulating mental health policy for geriatrics

A hospital-based study on knowledge, attitude and practice of pregnant women on gender preference, prenatal sex determination and female feticide.

India has witnessed a decline in sex ratio in the past few decades. A hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out to find out the attitude toward gender preference and knowledge as well as practice toward prenatal sex determination and female feticide among pregnant women. A majority (66.0%) of the pregnant women did not show any gender preference, followed by male preference (22.2%) and female preference (11.8%). A high proportion, i.e. 84.7% and 89.7%, of the total subjects were aware that prenatal sex determination and female feticide is illegal, respectively.

Tuberculosis of the middle ear

Tuberculosis of the middle ear and the mastoid is not a very common condition. Traditionally it has been diagnosed because of its peculiar clinical features such as painless otorrhoea, sensori-neural hearing loss and multiple perforations in the tympanic membrane. We report a case in which there were no clinical features of tuberculosis, otorrhoea was painful and hearing loss was of conductive variety. The final diagnosis depends on histopathology and we recommend pathological examination of all tissue removed during surgery