Assessment of Social Health in Elderly

Introduction: Elderly or geriatric age group refers to the population who have crossed the chronological age of 60 years. Changing traditional values, mobility of younger generations, change in family structure and the changing role of women have also contributed to the crisis in the care of elderly. Social health is therefore of much importance in the geriatric population. Objective To assess the social health in elderly in Jorhat district of Assam. Materials and methods Community based cross sectional study conducted from October 2015 to January 2016 in a randomly selected urban slum of Jorhat district Results Out of total 154 respondents, maximum were female (53.9 %). Most (71.5 %) of the respondents were in the age group of 60-69 years and only 4.5 % were more than 80 years. Majority (83.7 %) participants felt that old age has affected their day to day life activities either partially (63.6 %) or completely (20.1 %). A total of 16.9 % of the respondents said that they were not sad at all and 83.1 % were sad on the day of interview. Conclusion The results of this study showed that a major proportion of participants felt that their day to day activities were affected by their old age. A major chunk of study population was not happy due to various reasons like feeling of loneliness, felt neglected and for their alcoholic sons. Moreover, a bulk of study population was not aware of the government scheme of elderly. Further in depth studies are required to unfold the exact.