Psychiatric Morbidities of Elderly Out-patients Attending Various Outreach Clinics in Gandaki Province of Nepal: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Dramatic growth of the aging population resulted in an increased number of mentaldisorders and such data are limited in Nepal. The objective is to find out the psychiatric morbiditiesof elderly out-patients attending Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre out-reach clinics in GandakiProvince of Nepal.
 Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in 392 patients attending out-reachclinics of Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre of Gandaki Province for one year with the convenientsampling method. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee of ManipalCollege of Medical Sciences, Pokhara. The diagnosis was done according to the InternationalClassification of Disease-10 guidelines. Epi-info 7 was used and point estimate at 95% ConfidenceInterval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data and the analysis wasdone.
 Results: The prevalence of neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders 145 (37.0%) wasmaximum followed by mood disorders 111 (28.3%). Maximum cases were in between 66 and 75years, Brahmin and Chhetri caste, females, married, and from an extended nuclear family. Thereis more prevalence of female gender in all psychiatric diagnoses except in mental and behavioraldisorders due to psychoactive substance use. There is more prevalence of age groups of patients lessthan or equal to 75 years in all the psychiatric diagnosis.
 Conclusions: Neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders were the most common diagnosis.The risk of development of certain disorders based on gender and age group of the patients wouldbe helpful for case identification.

Psychiatric Morbidity Among Older Hospitalized Patients

“…There were more male than female patients in our sample that is consistent with some similar research [ 12 ], while other studies report a higher proportion of female participants [ 10 , 13 ]. Cultural factors that influence women’s attitudes toward mental health issues in BiH could be an interesting topic for analysis.…”

“…Likely reasons for this trend may include organizational changes during the COVID-19 pandemic at our department ( 9 ) and the overall increase in life expectancy. The largest number of hospitalized patients was from the age group of 55-64 years, and this number decreased with advancing age, which is in line with findings from other studies ( 10 , 11 ).…”

“…More than half of the subjects (58.2%) were married, with the percentage of divorced individuals (18.5%) and widows/widowers (15.2%) being comparable. Other similar studies have also found a high prevalence of married individuals ( 10 ). The majority of our subjects came from rural areas (60.6%), had completed secondary education (51.5%), and had a lower socioeconomic status–nearly half (47.4%) had monthly incomes ranging from 300-599 BAM, and almost a quarter (24.3%) had no income at all.…”

Satisfaction Level of Old Age Allowance Receiving Elderly People in Kushma Municipality

“…Among the elderly people, there is a prevalence of psychiatric morbidities such as stress prone and mood disorders (Khattri et al, 2020), 'depressive disorder' (Thapa et al, 2014) and various forms of retinal disorders, which increase with ageing (Thapa et al, 2020). The occurrence of health complications among the elderly people may cause dissatisfaction towards life.…”