Depression in geriatric and adult medical inpatients

The authors administered two scales for the evaluation of depression, the Zung SDS and the DFS (Depression Factor Score), derived from the SCL-90, to two groups of medical inpatients: One composed of adult subjects (N = 201) and the other of geriatric subjects (N = 178). The results confirm a high presence of depressive symptoms among patients with medical problems, particularly among geriatric subjects; the prevalence of depression was 20.39% for the adults and 42.13% for the elderly patients. High indices of correlation between the two scales were found for both populations. A multiple regression analysis indicated that the factors most predictive of depressive symptoms are female sex and the presence of somatic symptoms likely to lead to disability for elderly subjects and low social class and female sex for adults.