Abstract

MAXIMIANO-BARRETO, Madson Alan  and  FERMOSELI, André Fernando de Oliveira. Prevalence of anxiety and depression in the elderly with low educational level in Maceió/Al. Psic., Saúde & Doenças [online]. 2017, vol.18, n.3, pp.801-813. ISSN 1645-0086.  https://doi.org/10.15309/17psd180314.

This article aims to analyze the prevalence of anxiety and depression in the elderly with low educational level of the community Santo Onofre in Maceió - AL. It is a non-probabilistic cross-sectional study conducted with 86 elderlies, aged between 60 and 90 years (X̅= 68.05; SD = 6,784), from Health of the Family Strategy Program (HFS). It adopted as a research method the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS-15) and the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) for analyzing possible symptoms of depression and anxiety and a closed questions survey, developed by the researchers, to identify age, color, socioeconomic level and others. It was found that oldest women have statistically higher GDS-15 and GAI than oldest men. The χ² test identified a statistically significant link between sex of individuals and the occurrence of Anxiety (χ² = 4.85, df = 1, p <0.05). However, it is suggested to produce new studies for this population due to two factors: a) the increase in the number of elderly people in Brazil and b) to include the variable "education" as part of the actions that improves the routine of individuals.

Keywords : anxiety; depression; elderly; low education.

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