Health physical and mental status in the elderly of Kerman

With increasing life expectancy, mean and median age of the population and the number and proportion of older people have increased. To plan for providing services to this population, access to accurate information is essential. The present study describes assessing physical and mental health status elderly in Kerman city that will provide appropriate evidences for planners.

This was a cross-sectional study in which 400 elderly people were questioned in Kerman. Data collection was performed by standard questionnaires(ADL, SF36, Kessler-K6 and Yeild questionnaire). To analyze the data we used SPSS17 software, and statistical tests such as chi square, T test, and one way ANOVA were applied.

More than half of the elderly had problems with depression and anxiety disorders. In psychological wellbeing, Loneliness was the most common complain of old people. The activities of daily living were found to be without any dependence in 56% of population and 30% with relative dependence and 14% with complete dependence. Also on Physical Performance 22% of elderly had severe restrictions, 35.2% had moderate restrictions and 36.2% had Low restrictions.

there are many problems for elderly. Therefore, more efforts are essential to modify these effects in order to protect their independence.