The Effect of Recreation Therapy on Depression Symptom in Older Adults Referred Elected Day care Center in Tehran

Today healthcare problems of the elderly has gained new and extensive dimensions in the community due to their increased population. According to statistics, depression is one of the most important psychological problems in the elderly that needs attention. In this regard, this study was conducted with the aim to investigate the effect of recreation therapy on depression in old adults. The current research is a quasi-experimental study. The statistical community included the elderly aged over 60 years who attended Yas day-care center in Tehran and met the inclusion criteria(n=200). The subjects were assigned to experimental (n=32) and control (n=32) groups randomly.2 persons omitted from control group. The intervention included 10 recreation therapy sessions over 10 weeks which were held for the experimental group. Depression was measured before and after intervention and also two weeks after intervention in both groups. The research instruments included GDS (alpha: 0.9), AMT (alpha: 0.99) and ADL (alpha: 0.93) questionnaires. Data were analyzed in SPSS 18 using statistical tests of Chi-square, independent t-test, Mann-Whitney, Generelized Estimating Equatios Model and Shapiro-wilk Test. The mean score of depression in the experimental group before intervention, after intervention and in fallow up were 5.58±4.2, 2.59±2012,3.03±2.2 and in control group were 5.20±3.01, 5.16±2.9,5±2.8. These results were statistically significant at the 95% level (p=0.001). The results of this study showed that there was no significant difference in the level of depression before intervention between the experimental and control groups (p=0.932); however a significant difference existed between pretest-posttest and pretest-follow up in the experimental group(p=0.001, p=0.007). Due to Generelized Estimating Equatios Model in the experimental group there was a significant difference between the pre-test, post-test and follow-up(P<0.0001) while there was no significant difference between the pre-test, post-test and follow-up(P>0.05). The findings showed that recreation therapy significantly improves depression in the elderly.