The prevalence of depressive symptoms and other variables among frail aging men in New York City's Personal Care Services program

BackgroundNew York City's Personal Care Service Program provides service-rich assistance to the frail elderly who would not be able to live at home without such support. However, gender-specific health care delivery has not been introduced. Depressive symptoms are common among elderly people. We conducted a cross-sectional study in order to investigate the prevalence of depressive symptoms and other variables among frail elderly men receiving personal care services.MethodsData were collected from administrative data available in the Human Resources Administration's computer system. Two hundred men aged 65 or older were randomly selected. We defined depressive symptoms by tracking the recording of depressed mood in the data system. We examined statistical differences in a variety of indicators between elderly men with and without depressive symptoms. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to determine which independent variables were associated with depressive symptoms.ResultsOf all cases, 10.5% had depressive symptoms. In multiple logistic regression models, the duration of services provision and hearing impairment were independently associated with depressive symptoms in frail elderly men.ConclusionThe results of this study indicate the low prevalence of depressive symptoms among frail elderly men compared with previous studies. The duration of services provision was a protective factor for depressive symptoms, i.e. personal care services provided high quality Activities of Daily Living (ADL) support, which keeps frail elderly men living at home for as long as possible. The significance of hearing impairment, which can induce social isolation, also needs to be stressed as an indicator of depressive symptoms, even though there was no discrete measurement of social isolation included in the data.