Psychiatric morbidity and quality of life of inmates in old age homes

Authors : Shamsi Akbar¹, S.C. Tiwari², Nisha Mani Pandey³, Rakesh Kumar Tripathi⁴, Ambrish Kumar⁵

          1Ph.D. Scholor, 2Professor & Head, 3Senior Research Officer, 4Assistant Professor & Clinical Psychologist, 5Social Worker, Department of Geriatric Mental Health, King George’s Medical University  Lucknow, India.

The First Poster Award in GERON-2013

Introduction: The rapid growth in the proportion of older adults in the country has important consequences and implications. Some of the areas that would be affected include those related to health and health care, family composition, living arrangement, housing and migration. As a result of these socio-demographic evolutions and situations, older adults at times are forced to shift from their own homes to institutions/ old age homes. These and other factors make the older adults increasingly vulnerable to mental health problems. There is also some preliminary evidence that life in old age homes is perceived by inmates as more supportive, though the issue is not well studied.

Aim: To assess the psychiatric morbidity and quality of life of elderly people residing in old age homes.

Material and Methods: The present study was carried out in a specific population of in-mates of old age homes in District Bareily, Uttar Pradesh. Fourty elderly subjects from three old age homes, aged 60 yrs or above, were residing in those setting for one and half years or more, have given their informed consent to participate in the study, were recruited for the purpose. SPAS was used to screen the study population for psychotic and non-psychotic symptoms. The Psychiatric diagnosis was made according to International classification of diseases 10^th Revision Diagnostic criteria. WHOQOL –BREF were administered to assess quality of life. SPSS-16 was used for statistical analysis.

Results:  The most of the elderly were females, aged between 60-69 yrs, educated up to 8^th and were widow/widower. Prevalence of psychiatric illness among elderly in-mates was found to be significantly correlated   with their quality of life. The inmates who were suffering from psychiatric illness had good quality of life and those who were not suffering from psychiatric illness had very good quality of life.

Key words: Old age home, Psychiatric morbidity and quality of life.

Reference: Akbar S, Tiwari SC, Garg RK, Pandey NM, Tripathi RK, Kumar A.  Psychiatric morbidity and quality of life of inmates in old age homes.  Indian Journal of Geriatric Mental Health, vol.9 No.(1), supplement, 18,  May 2013.

The poster was presented by Miss S. Akabar in 9th National Annual Conference of Indian Association for Geriatric Mental Health at Lucknow on 19-20 August, 2013(GERON-2013)