title: Prevalence of the major mental disorders among the Korean elderly.
abstract: With a rapidly aging society, geriatric mental health is emerging as important public health concern. Despite the short history of psychiatric epidemiology in Korea, recently, epidemiologic data regarding geriatric psychiatric problems has started to accumulate. In the current study, we reviewed epidemiological findings regarding geriatric mental health in Korea. It was found that up to 10% of the elderly suffer from dementia, and 10% to 20% from depressive disorder. Further, prevalence estimates of Alzheimer's disease ranged from 4.2% to 9.0%, and vascular dementia from 1.0% to 4.8%. Annual incidence rates for Alzheimer's were 2.7% to 3.4% whereas that for vascular dementia was found to be as low as 0.3%. The prevalence of major depressive disorder was 4.2% to 9.1%, while that of clinically significant depressive symptom was between 9.1% and 33.0%. Finally, those with alcohol use disorders were found to comprise up to 13.6% of elderly population and additionally, 22% to 58% of the elderly were found to have sleep difficulties. Thus major mental disorders are already prevalent among the Korean elderly and are likely to increase rapidly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. mjcho@snu.ac.kr
authors.forename: Maeng Je
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Jun Young
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Byung-Soo
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Hae Woo
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Jee Hoon
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Sohn
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000453:epidemiology; D003704:Dementia / Q000453:epidemiology; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000453:epidemiology; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015995:Prevalence; D056910:Republic of Korea / Q000453:epidemiology; D012307:Risk Factors