Screening for depression in elderly medical inpatients from rural area of Norway: prevalence and associated factors Anne-Sofie Helvik 1,2,3 , Randi H. Skancke 2 and Geir Selbæk 4,5 1 Department of Public Health and General Practice, Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway 2 Innlandet Hospital Trust, Division Tynset, Norway 3 St. Olav’s University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway 4 Research Centre for Old Age Psychiatric Research, Innlandet Hospital Trust, Ottestad, Norway 5 The Norwegian Centre for Dementia Research, Ullevaal University Hospital, Oslo, Norway Correspondence to: A.-S. Helvik, E-mail: anne-sofie.helvik@ntnu.no Aim: The present investigation screened for depression in order to assess the prevalence of depression and to study the associated factors with depression in elderly medically hospitalised patients from a rural area in Norway. Methods: A cross-sectional study evaluated 484 (243 women) elderly medical inpatients with age range 65–101 (mean 80.7) years between September 2006 and August 2008 and used the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HAD), Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale, the Mini-Mental State Examination, Lawton and Brody’s scale for self-maintaining and instrumental activities of daily living. Results: The prevalence of current depression, depression score 8 at HAD, was for the total sample 10% of whom 78% was previously not diagnosed as having depression. The odds for depression were decreased for women aged 80 years or more while for men at the same age strata it was increased threefold. Age adjusted logistic regression analyses demonstrated an increased odds for depression for those who were in need of nursing assistance before hospitalisation, had lower level of physical functioning, had clinical anxiety symptoms and had higher number of medicaments at inclusion time. Conclusion: The prevalence of depression in medical hospitalised elderly from rural areas was lower than in most other hospital studies. However, most patients with depression were not previously recognised as being depressed. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: screening; depressive symptoms; prevalence; HAD; MADRS; inpatients History: Received 10 February 2009; Accepted 8 April 2009; Published online 23 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/gps.2312 Introduction Depression in elderly individuals may lead to physical and/or cognitive disability (Covinsky et al., 1997; Alexopoulos et al., 2002), decrease their quality of life (Kørner, 1998) and increased mortality risk (Her- mann-Lingen et al., 2001). Globally, depression is reported to be a common disorder in the elderly. Prevalence estimates of about 8–15% have been reported based on reviews of epidemiological com- munity studies in Europe and worldwide (Copeland et al., 1999; Rosenvinge and Rosenvinge, 2003). A higher prevalence of depressive symptoms and depression has been reported in studies involving elderly medical inpatients, between 6% and 73% (see Table 1). Some of the variability of hospital studies may be due to differences in methodology and screening and diagnostic criteria, but also to sample character- istics. The samples have differed in terms of known risk factors for depression in elderly, such as female gender, higher age, serious physical diseases and impairment, cognitive impairment and social background. RESEARCH ARTICLE Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 2010; 25: 150–159.