Frecuencia y caracterización de enfermedades mentales en tiempos de pandemia en adultos mayores en la consulta externa en el año 2021 en el Hospital José Carrasco Arteaga de Cuenca – Ecuador

Abstract

Background: more than 20% of older adults suffer from mental illness to varying degrees of severity, having important connotations in functional dependence, aggravation of pre-existing chronic diseases and representing health costs. Objective: to determine the frequency and characteristics of the most prevalent mental illnesses in times of pandemic in older adults in the outpatient clinic in 2021 at the José Carrasco Arteaga Hospital in the city of Cuenca-Ecuador. Methodology: descriptive, retrospective study in elderly patients diagnosed with mental illness. We worked with an anonymized database granted by the Jose Carrasco Arteaga Hospital, classified according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, then analyzed with the statistical program Microsoft Excel, and exposed in descriptive tables. The variables were: elderly, sex, occupation, origin, mental illness, comorbidities, personal pathological history. Results: the participants (n=109) were characterized by being mainly female (71.56%), being elderly older >75 years (85.32%), coming from Azuay (70.64%), mostly attended in the month of March (14.68%), suffering from mixed anxiety-depressive disorder (19.27%), as a personal pathological antecedent to arterial hypertension (37.61%), and with cardiac comorbidities (98.17%). Conclusions: dementia is the most frequent mental disorder of the older adults who participated in this study. This data is different from several international studies which indicate that depression and anxiety are the main health issues of older adults.