Assessing the mental health status of elderly in Shahrekord and relationship with sociodemographic factors

The world population is aging rapidly with increasing longevity, it's social, financial and health consequences can not be ignored. In addition to an increase of many age related physical illnesses, this demographic change will also lead to an increase of a number of mental health problems in older adults. This paper assessing mental health and relationship with demographic factors in later life. In this cross sectional study 400 individual aged 60 or more living in Shahrekord were selected by random sampling. Mental health was evaluated by General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) which was standardized for Iranian elderly population. The data were analyzed by SPSS- software program and descriptive statistics and chi-square test were used for data analysis. The GHQ-28 scale revealed that 53% of elderly were with somatization, 55. 5 % with anxiety, 37.8 % with social dysfunction and 45% with depression signs. A significant association was found between gender, level of education, marital status, life status, social participation and total dysfunction (P<0.05). according to the result of this study the prevalence of mental problems in the aged group is high. Therefore, any health promotion approach that could facilitate introduction of effective primary, secondary and even tertiary prevention strategies in old age psychiatry would be of significant importance.