Abstract

While research has documented the adverse effects of life events on depressive symptoms and cognitive function less research has explicitly examined such links among older adults. This study was planned to study the number, type of life events ,quantify the stress produced by the life event ,coping stress adopted by the elderly adult with psychiatric morbidity and compare it with those without psychiatric morbidity. This is a crosssectional study carried out on 50 elderly adults between 23rd February to 23rd April, living in urban community , Moula-ali Hyderabad .The study sample was selected by simple random sampling and those who met inclusion criteria were assessed onGHQ, MMSE, MINI-plus, PSLES,CCL .Prevalence of psychiatric morbidity among elderly adults living in urban community was found to be 26%.Stressful life events (SLE) were statistically significantly more in those with psychiatric morbidity (100%) than those without psychiatric morbidity(67.5%) (p =0.02).Mean stress scores were high in elderly with psychiatric morbidity (p value=0.04).The mean number of SLE were more in those with psychiatric morbidity(3.56) than those without(2.25).Elderly with psychiatric morbidity reported health related SLE (61.53%) and in those without psychiatric morbidity , non health related SLE (52%) were reported as the most stressful. Elderly with psychiatric morbidity who reported health related stressor, adopted emotion focused coping and the association was statistically significant (p=0.02). Sociodemographic factors were matched across two groups .Elderly adults presenting with psychiatric problem must be screened for stressful life events and counseled accordingly.