Abstract
Background and Objective: With the increasing life expectancy of the populations and rising prevalence of depressive and neurocognitive disorders, there is a need to address the association between the two in terms of magnitude of the neurocognitive disorders and the severity of depression. The current study addresses this issue and aims to observe the association between the two. Methods: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted from September 2014 to March 2015 at the Institute of Psychiatry at Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan where consecutive patients aged ≥ 65 years were screened for depression using Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Neurocognitive impairment was assessed using Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE). -square test was used to compute the association between depression severity and neurocognitive deficit. Results: There was approximately equal gender distribution with a mean age of 63.6 ± 9.68 years. Eighty six percent of the study population was found to be suffering from clinical depression while seventy percent had neurocognitive deficit. The severity of depression came out to be directly proportional to the magnitude of the neurocognitive disorder (P = 0.000) with 68.8% of the patients with severe depression having moderate to severe neurocognitive deficit. Conclusions: Depression is associated with significant neurocognitive impairment in elderly in the local population; higher the severity of depression more the magnitude of cognitive impairment.
Highlights
With the increase in life expectancy, the geriatric population is expected to double in 2050 from that of 2015
The present study was undertaken to assess the depression and neurocognitive deficits in the elderly patients and to observe the association between the two in patients presenting to a tertiary care hospital at Rawalpindi, Pakistan. This descriptive study was conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry at Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan from September 2014 to March 2015 availing the inpatient and outpatient facilities
The association between the severity of depression and cognitive impairment through Chi-square test was found to be highly statistically significant (P = 0.000) in the elderly presenting to the tertiary care hospital (Table-1), implying that severe the depression, higher will be the magnitude of the cognitive damage
Summary
With the increase in life expectancy, the geriatric population is expected to double in 2050 from that of 2015. This will result in the number of older adults (above 60 years of age) to 2 billion from a figure of 900 million.[1] Internationally, the prevalence of cognitive impairment and depression in the geriatric population is between 17%–36% and 11%–30% respectively.[2]. Two thirds of the individuals who are suffering from acute depression experience some level of cognitive impairment and Biomedica – Vol 36, Issue 4, 2020. With the increasing life expectancy of the populations and rising prevalence of depressive and neurocognitive disorders, there is a need to address the association between the two in terms of magnitude of the neurocognitive disorders and the severity of depression. The current study addresses this issue and aims to observe the association between the two
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