Objective: To identify depressive disorders among elderly patients at home treatment and care as they are very frequent but usually underdiagnosed and undertreated.
Design: Study was carried out during the regularly screening for early detection of psychiatric disorders among newly admitted patients, N=1328, at Institute of Gerontology Home Treatment and Care, Belgrade in 01.01.2000.-31.12.2001.
Materials and Methods: 992 of 1328 patients passed trough screening for early detection of psychiatric disorders using Simon's test (Simon,1968). As depressive symptoms were statistically highly constituents in group of patients with mental disorders, GDS (Yessavage et al,1983) were applied in 190 patients.
Results: The screening results were: 21,4% of patients were with marked and 26,5% were with severe psychiatric disorders. According to GDS, 174 ( 91,6%) were depressed.
Conclusion: We suppose that high frequency of depressed patients were found as it has been already selected population using a screening test. Through this study we confirm the importance of continuing screening for early detection of psychiatric disorders, i.e. depressive disorders, as it is the quickest way to find out patient for further psychiatric treatment and care.
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