Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression among the Elderly

The old age is an integral part of human life. A study was conducted to assess the prevalence of anxiety of elderly people living in institutionalized and non- institutionalized care in Shillong city of Meghalaya and Guwahati city of Assam state. A descriptive research design was adopted on 120 samples, 60 elderly under institutionalized care and 60 elderly under non-institutionalized care which is further divided into 30 males and 30 females in both institutionalized and non-institutionalized care. The data were collected through a set of questionnaire using Anxiety, depression and stress scale Inventory devised by Bhatnagar (2017) Mean, frequency, percentage, standard deviation and t-test was used to analyse the data. It is concluded from the study that majority of the respondents were in the age group of 75 years above. Results revealed maximum numbers of male and female respondents had above average level of anxiety in institutional care whereas, maximum numbers of male and female respondents had average level of anxiety in non- institutional care. Maximum numbers of male and female respondents were above average level of depression in institutional care.