Prevalence of Depression in the Rural Elderly

摘要

The research reported here (a) provided an estimate of the prevalence of major and minor affective disorders, based on accepted diagnostic criteria, in a large sample of rural elderly; (b) compared three elderly groups (asymptomatic, symptomatic, and depressed) on a large number of variables available from the baseline interview of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) epidemiological survey; and (c) identified background variables that predict elderly at high risk for both elevated depressive symtomatology and depressive disorder through multiple regression techniques.