The Influences of Physical Health, Cognitive Symptom and Nutritional Status on the Depression of the Elderly Dwelling in a Big City

Kang, Ji Sook; Chung, Yeo Sook

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purposes of this study were to investigate factors related to the depression of the elderly dwelling in a big city, and to explore the influence of physical health, cognitive symptom and nutritional status on the elders' depression.
METHODS
After the approval of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and obtaining the participants' consent form, a face-to-face and private interview was conducted with each participant from May, 2007 to Aug, 2007 by trained graduate level students. A total of 201 elders aged over 65 years participated in the study. The questionnaire consisted of K-GDS, PHQ-15 and Nutritional Screening Initiative (NSI). Collected data were analyzed with the SPSS 13.0 program, which was used for frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson correlation coefficients, and multiple regression.
RESULTS
The major findings of this study were as follows. 1) 28.4% of the subjects belonged to the depression group, 78.1% had one or more diseases, 85.6% had experienced somatic symptoms, and 49.7% belonged to the nutritional risk group. 2) Older age, lower educational level, more pocket money, a larger number of diseases, more severe cognitive symptoms and poorer nutritional status were significantly related to a higher depression score. 3) Significant factors influencing depression were nutritional status, cognitive symptoms and the number of diseases, which explained 38.1% of the variance of elderly depression, and nutritional status was the most influencing factor.
CONCLUSION
The finding of this study gives useful information for developing assessment tools and interventions for elders' depression.