Prevalence of Depression among Iranian Elderly: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Observational Studies

Background: Depression is a disabling mental disease that is highly prevalent among people. Elderly people, due to adverse events in life, disability, and physical diseases, are prone to depression.Objectives: The present systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the prevalence of depression among Iranian elderly people.Methods: The search process was conducted in national and international databases, including SID, MagIran, PubMed, Scopus, Science Direct, Web of Science, and Google Scholar using the keywords “senile depression”, “geriatric depression”, “elderly”, “depression”, “depressive disorder” and “Iran” and all their possible combinations. Subgroup analysis was used to discover potential sources of heterogeneity and meta-regression was used to investigate the relationship between the prevalence of depression and the mean age, sample size, and year of publication. The data were analyzed using meta-analysis and random-effects models. The data were analyzed using STATA (version ۱۲).Results: The analysis of the ۲۴ selected articles showed that the overall prevalence of depression among Iranian elderly people was ۵۳.۷% (۹۵% CI: ۴۳.۱-۶۴.۴). The findings, categorized by gender, showed that the prevalence of depression in women was higher than in men (۵۰%; ۹۵% CI: ۴۲.۳-۶۹.۷ vs. ۴۲.۲; ۹۵% CI: ۲۸.۲-۵۶.۳). The sample size of the articles and the prevalence of depression among Iranian elderly people were associated (p=۰.۰۰۹).Conclusion: Depression is highly prevalent among Iranian elderly people. Identifying the status of depression in the Iranian elderly population seems to be necessary to investigate, control, and provide interventions with the aim of preventing, identifying, and treating the Iranian elderly people prone to depression.

Keywords:

depression , Prevalence , Elderly , Iran , Meta-analysis