Psychological disorders; old age and prevalence

ABSTRACT

Psychological anthropology is one of the most current academic discipline; the intellectual study of the association between the individual and culture debatably instigated in the late nineteenth century, when W. H. R. Rivers and his contemporaries commenced an expedition to Melanesia to examine the perceptions of the local people. objective of the study is to find relationship between old age and psychological disorders. Cross sectional. The study was conducted in Rawalpindi city. A structured questionnaire was designed to investigate all the variables of the study. A sample of 500 respondents were drawn from the older population [older persons] of Rawalpindi city by using convenient sampling technique. Data entry and analysis was done by using SPSS. There was a significant relationship found between old age and psychological disorders. According to this study, older people are suffering from psychological disorders namely; anxiety, sadness, depression, isolation, insomnia, dementia, and feeling of being useless. Older persons are more vulnerable to the mental illness and psychological problems. Some problems are prevailed in high proportion among elder persons such as anxiety, insomnia and feeling of being useless. Good mind is bound with good health, this clearly depicts that older persons are not suffering from poor psychological health but also they are facing adverse health conditions. Statistical observations show that some of the older adults facing more than one psychological problem, their ratio is 6.2% of total sample