Aging & Society: Eighth Interdisciplinary Conference

Abstract

Geriatric mental health is an emerging aspect of public health that possess numerous challenges to our society. The most common type of mental disorders found among aged persons are dementia, depression, and anxiety. The aim of this study was to assess mental health status among the elderly women of two distinct socio-economic classes. This community based cross sectional study includes total 270 Hindu elderly women (135 individuals each from two different socio-economic classes) of age 60 years and above from urban areas of Kolkata, India. General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) was used for screening non-psychotic psychiatric disorders among the study groups; and scoring was done based on population specific threshold value. Results revealed that 69.6% of the study participants had probable mental disorder which is significantly higher among lower socio-economic group. The mean of total GHQ score had also significantly differed between two groups. Compared with elderly women of upper socio-economic class, the resource poor elderly women showed a significantly higher disorder in the four mentioned subscales such as somatic symptom, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and severe depression. Increasing age along with the socio-economic burden increases the risk of mental morbidity in old age.