Abstract
Background: Elderly people need to care services in particular to maintain a high quality of life and health status. Managing the health needs of geriatric patients is part of the continuity of care family physicians provide to their patients. Aims: to assess physicians' attitude, perception and practice toward depression in elderly in primary care sitting.Methodology: A cross- sectional study to assess primary health care physicians' attitude and perceptions and practices toward depression in elderly patients in primary health care centers of King Saud medical city in Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia using self-administrated questionnaire Results: We received 210 responses to our questionnaire with response rate of 100% where 51% of them were females. PHC physicians routinely screen for sleep disturbance (79%), loss of interest or pleasure (79%), sad mood (72%), and decreased energy (63%) in order to diagnosis of depression. Moreover, we found that 56% of physicians would use clinical guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of geriatric depression. Furthermore, the main barriers to adequate diagnosis and treatment of elderly depressed patients were rejection of patients to treatment (22% of them indicated it as major problem) and difficulty for access to mental health care in our community (19% of them indicated it as major problem).Conclusion: we found that most of the physicians in Riyadh show high positive attitude toward depression of elderly however, there are some limitations in knowledge about symptoms of depression and restriction to guideline.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not restricted to absence of disease and mental health is an inherent component of health [1]
85% of physicians did not think that elderly patients would expect their primary care physician to deal with depression, while 55% of them did not think that there is nothing to do with depression, 53% denied that they were pressured for time to routinely investigate depression in elderly patients (Figure1)
Results of this study showed that most of the physicians depend on sleep disturbance, loss of interest and sad mood as symptoms of depression in elderly patients while only 21% and 27% would ask for sexual complaints or pain
Summary
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not restricted to absence of disease and mental health is an inherent component of health [1]. Primary care physicians have a significant role in management of depression in elderly starting with diagnosis of depression [7]. Managing the health needs of geriatric patients is part of the continuity of care family physicians provide to their patients. Aims: to assess physicians' attitude, perception and practice toward depression in elderly in primary care sitting. Methodology: A cross- sectional study to assess primary health care physicians' attitude and perceptions and practices toward depression in elderly patients in primary health care centers of King Saud medical city in Riyadh, kingdom of Saudi Arabia using self-administrated questionnaire Results: We received 210 responses to our questionnaire with response rate of 100% where 51% of them were females. Conclusion: we found that most of the physicians in Riyadh show high positive attitude toward depression of elderly there are some limitations in knowledge about symptoms of depression and restriction to guideline
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