Psychiatric Morbidities of Elderly Out-patients Attending Various Outreach Clinics in Gandaki Province of Nepal: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

Abstract

Introduction: Dramatic growth of the aging population resulted in an increased number of mentaldisorders and such data are limited in Nepal. The objective is to find out the psychiatric morbiditiesof elderly out-patients attending Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre out-reach clinics in GandakiProvince of Nepal. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted in 392 patients attending out-reachclinics of Baglung, Kusma, Walling, and Dumre of Gandaki Province for one year with the convenientsampling method. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee of ManipalCollege of Medical Sciences, Pokhara. The diagnosis was done according to the InternationalClassification of Disease-10 guidelines. Epi-info 7 was used and point estimate at 95% ConfidenceInterval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data and the analysis wasdone. Results: The prevalence of neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders 145 (37.0%) wasmaximum followed by mood disorders 111 (28.3%). Maximum cases were in between 66 and 75years, Brahmin and Chhetri caste, females, married, and from an extended nuclear family. Thereis more prevalence of female gender in all psychiatric diagnoses except in mental and behavioraldisorders due to psychoactive substance use. There is more prevalence of age groups of patients lessthan or equal to 75 years in all the psychiatric diagnosis. Conclusions: Neurotic, stress-related, and somatoform disorders were the most common diagnosis.The risk of development of certain disorders based on gender and age group of the patients wouldbe helpful for case identification.