Depression and concomitant diseases in a Turkish geriatric outpatient setting

Depression is an important but inadequately diagnosed mood disorder in elderly. Depressed elderly patients often have chronic concomitant diseases. This paper intended to determine the prevalence of depression and its relation with concomitant disorders and social status among the patients admitted to our geriatric unit. Seven hundred and eighty-nine females and 466 males admitted to our unit were examined for the presence of depression by using the geriatric depression scale (GDS) test. The presence of concomitant diseases was assessed. Depression was diagnosed in 273 patients (21.8%), 193 (70.7%) females and 80 (29.3%) males. Depressed patients suffered from a wide range of other diseases the number and prevalence of which were as follows: Alzheimer's disease (AD) (34; 12.5%), vascular dementia (27; 9.9%), hypertension (HT) (211; 77.3%), diabetes mellitus (DM) (64; 23.4%), osteoporosis (182; 66.7%), atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) (89; 32.6%), cardiac failure (23; 8.5%), bronchial asthma (8; 2.9%), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (25; 9.2%) and osteoarthritis (133; 48.8%). The correlation between depression and concomitant diseases was statistically significant in hypertensive, demented and osteoporotic patients, as determined in a large elderly population. Previous studies examined the correlation of depression with only one concomitant disease, while we performed the analysis on multiple correlations.