Acta Biomedica Scientia

A COMMUNITY BASED STUDY ON MORBIDITY PROFILE AND MENTAL HEALTH OF ELDERLY IN A RURAL AREA OF TAMILNADU

Soujanya A

nithish@gmail.com

Morbidity profile, Elderly, Chronic and Acute illness

The proportion of elderly is increasing worldwide as well as in India. The demographic transition in India paved a way to enter into the list of “greying nation”. The process of biological ageing brings with it various illnesses. This study was conducted with the objective of determining the morbidity profile of elderly people residing in a rural area. Methodology: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted among elderly aged 60 years and above residing in rural area of Tamilnadu. Simple random sampling was used to select two sub-centre areas among four, under the field practice area and all the eligible elderly individuals were included in the study. House to house visit was made and after obtaining informed consent, the data were collected by direct interview method using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire, verification of health records and by doing clinical examination. Results: A total of 954 individuals were included in the study of which 66.4% and 33.6% of them were females and males respectively. The mean age of the study population was 68 ± 6.8 years. Acute and chronic illnesses were present among 4% and 47.7% of elderly individuals respectively. Hypertension (42.5%) was observed to be the predominant chronic illness among the elderly individuals followed by Diabetes Mellitus (29.6%), Osteoarthritis (8.1%) and Bronchial asthma (7.9%), Visual problems (4.3%), Coronary artery disease (2.9%), Cerebrovascular accident (1.2%) and hearing problems (0.9%). Conclusions and Recommendations: Chronic illness was found to be more among elderly than acute illness. Hence it is recommended to screen elderly individuals in the community utilizing the platform of community based assessment for non-communicable diseases. The study also recommends implementing stringent tobacco control measures so as to curtail the silent epidemic of non-communicable diseases