[Depressive symptoms in physically frail elderly]

In 1988 a study aiming to evaluate the effectiveness of an outpatient geriatric clinic was started. Elderly persons (75-90 years) living at home or in the two old people's homes in the municipality Sittard (The Netherlands) were screened on physical vulnerability by means of oral interviews. It was possible to collect data about demographic variables and depressive complaints of 222 frail elderly. For this article the internal consistency of the Zung-depression scale (DSI) was tested for the study group. Relations between depression and the registered demographic variables are discussed. It showed that Cronbach's alpha of the depression scale is .82. A varimax rotated factor analysis resulted in six factors with a high percentage of explained variance on the first factor. This result indicates that the instrument is unidimensional. There was no systematic bias introduced by physical vulnerability. Of all frail elderly, 28% had depressive complaints. In general, women scored somewhat higher on the depression index than men. Only a slight relation between depression and age was found. Concerning household composition this study showed that frail elderly living alone and residents of old people's homes had significantly more depressive complaints than frail elderly living with others and independently living frail elderly respectively.