Depressive status in retired elderly people and community nursing intervention

Fengmei XING; Xifeng TIAN; Jianmin LI

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

With the increase of senile population, it needs to further improve their mental health when improving their physical health. To study the depressive status of retired elderly people in order to provide basis for effective community nursing intervention.

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate and analyze the depression incidence among retired elderly people and conducted correlative factors analysis in order to improve the nursing service to aged people's mental health.

DESIGN:

Cross-sectional sampling study towards retired senior people.

SETTING:

Nursing department of a medical college.

PARTICIPANTS:

This study was completed in Nursing Department of North China Coal Medical College during September to December 2002. It conducted questionnaire survey to 1 000 retired people in Tangshan city by family visit. There were 574 male and 426 female who aged from 60 to 88years old with mean age of 67 years.

METHODS:

To adopt geriatric depression scale and general condition questionnaire investigation to individuals.MAIN OUTCOME

MEASURES:

Depression scale score, depression incidence and frequency of correlative factors

RESULTS:

Mild depression accounts for 17.2% while moderate and severe depression account for 5% among retired elderly people. There is close relationship between factors such as retired veterans, female, low education,lack of social support, empty life, lack of exercise and poor self-assessed health and depression incidence(x2 = 9.80 - 175.93, P ＜ 0. 05).

CONCLUSION:

The incidence of senile depression among retired elderly people is pretty high so that it is important to pay attention to mental care towards retried people when doing community nursing, especially to divorced, widowed, female and low educated retired people.