Geriatric depression scale
Depression is widely found in elders as they experience more stress and changes in life. This depression is called a Geriatric depression. Hence a Geriatric Depression Scale helps to identify depression in elders. It was developed by J. A. Yesavage with the help of few others in 1982. A Geriatric Depression scale is a self report assessment with 30 items or questions with a choice of two answers only. The answers should be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This simplicity has made it very comfortable and easy for the routine comprehensive geriatric assessment. Though the Geriatric Depression Scale is designed to provide reliable and valid results for diagnoses of depression, they cannot be fully trusted. Further diagnoses of an expert need to be accompanied for determining depression.
The Geriatric Depression scale comprises of questions that are related to the feelings, moods, thoughts, worries that a person is having in the recent past. For answering every question one point is to be given. The scores are finally totalled to determine the severity of depression. If the score is 0-9, then it is normal. If 10-19, then depression would be mild, if above 20, then it is severe depression. Once identified, they help in finding remedies for beating depression.
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