Depression in Frail Dutch Elderly

Abstract

All elderly (75-90) living at home and in the two old people's homes in the municipality Sittard (The Netherlands) were assessed on physical vulnerability by means of oral interviews. In this way we were able to identify 222 frail elderly and collect data about demographic variables and depressive complaints. In this article the internal consistency of the Zung depression scale (Zung 1965) was tested for frail elderly. Relations between depression and demographic variables are discussed. The depression scale was internally consistent with a Cronbach's α of .82. Factor analysis resulted in 6 factors with a high percentage of explained variance on the first factor, indicating that the instrument is midimensional. The stability of the depression scale was not influenced by physical vulnerability. Of all frail elderly 28% had depressive complaints. Women scored somewhat higher on the depression index than men. A slight relation was found between depression and old age. This study shows that frail elderly living alone and residents of old people's homes have significantly more depressive complaints than respectively frail elderly living with others and independently living frail elderly.