Objective: Therapy compliance contributes to symptoms control, rehabilitation, socialization and finally quality of life of psychiatric patients. Elderly psychiatric patients present particular difficulties to follow the recommended treatment due to impairment of their senses, coexisting diseases and dependence from their familial and social environment. The goal of our study was to investigate the factors compliance behavior in psychogeriatric outpatients depends on.
Design: Retrospective case-control study.
Materials and Methods: 128 patients, 58 m and 70 f, who had mood disorders, anxiety disorders or dementia, were examined retrospectively. Their mean age was 72±12 y.o. All patients were recommended a treatment program and were re-examined in regular intervals for the follow-up of course of illness. Therapy compliance was evaluated using information given by the patients and their relatives. The influence of the disorder, age, sex, educational level, coexisting medications for other medical conditions, and family support were evaluated. The patients according to psychiatric disorders were divided in the group of mood disorders, the group of dementia and the group of anxiety disorders, according to age in the group of new old (65-74y.o.) and the group of old old (>74y.o.), and according to education in the group of elementary education (up to 6 years) and the group of higher education (> 6 years). Data were analyzed with the Fisher’s exact test and p<0.05 were considered significant.
Results: The analysis of our data showed that sex and coexisting medications did not influence the therapy compliance. The impact of age, education and family support is shown in table 1 whereas the impact of psychiatric disorders in table 2.
Table 1.
|
| Age* | Education** | Family support*** | |||
|
| 65-74 y | >74 y | Up to 6 y | >6 y | YES | NO |
| Compl. | 59(46%) | 45(35%) | 26(20%) | 78(61%) | 77(60%) | 27(21%) |
| No compl. | 8(6%) | 16(13%) | 14(11%) | 10(8%) | 6(5%) | 18(14%) |
(*p=0.05, **p=0.01, ***p=0.001)
Table 2.
|
| Mood*** | Dementia** | Anxiety | Total |
| Compl.. | 71(91%) | 11(58%) | 22(71%) | 104(81%) |
| No compl. | 7(9%) | 8(42%) | 9(29%) | 24(19%) |
(***p<0.001, **p<0.01)
Conclusion: According to our data, we believe that mood disorders and dementia, very old age, elementary education, and the absence of family support are negative factors to the therapeutic compliance of psychogeriatric outpatients.
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