European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

EFFECT OF PSYCHODRAMA ON LEVEL OF DEPRESSION IN GERIATRIC POPULATION RESIDING AT SELECTED OLD AGE HOMES IN PUNE CITY

*Augustina Massey, Sheetal Barde and Manu Acha Roy

ABSTRACT

Background: Depression is different from normal sadness in that it engulfs our day-to-day life, interfering with our ability to work, study, eat, sleep and have fun. The feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and worthlessness are intense with little if any, relief. Depression demonstrates the variety of symptoms, such as mood, emotional, cognitive, motivational and physical signs. Depression is very common in More than 10 million cases per year (India). Hence, since psychodrama therapy pays a certain concern to these cases, it has been studies in the treatment field. Psychodrama is a method of group psychotherapy with interactive improvisation, theatre and other contextual frameworks. Objectives: 1) To determine the baseline level of depression in geriatric population. 2) To determine the level of depression post intervention through Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). 3) To compare the pre-test and post-test score. 4) To find the association between selected demographic variable and pre-test score. Research Methodology: The quantitative approach with Pre-Experimental One Group Pre-test Post-test Design is used in this study. Tool used is the standardized tool which is Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). There were 60 samples who met the inclusion criteria, by using the simple random sampling method. The intervention of psychodrama which was followed by monologue and empty chair was done for the period of 4 weeks. After the intervention post-test was conducted using the same tool by the investigator. The score were than calculated and reliability was established by Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.90. Thus the tool was found to be reliable. Results: Paired t-test for effectiveness of psychodrama on level of depression in geriatric population residing at selected old age homes in Pune city. Average depression score in pre-test was 12.1 which were 11.6 in post-test. T-value for this test was 2.7 with 59 degrees of freedom. Corresponding p-value was small (less than 0.05), the null hypothesis is rejected. It is evident that the psychodrama is significantly effective in improving the depression among geriatric population residing at old age homes. Fisher’s exact test is applied to find association between the post interventions on level of depression with the demographic variable. The association is considered to be significant if the p value is less than 0.05 (p<0.05). From the Fisher’s test table it can be seen that there is none of the demographic variables was found to have significant association with depression among geriatric population residing at the old age homes. Conclusion: The findings of the study shows that the effect of psychodrama brought a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test score, which means that the intervention was effective in decreasing the level of depression among geriatric population residing at old age homes.

Keywords: Depression, Psychodrama, Effectiveness, Geriatric Population, Mood Disorders.