Objectives: Present study aims to explore the nutritional risk of the elderly women and also to find out associated psychological and socio-economic factors, (if any) with nutritional risk or malnutrition.
Design: It is a cross-sectional study conducted among institutional elderly women.
Setting: The study was conducted among elderly women (aged 60 years and above) residing in six Old Age Homes located in the rural West Bengal, India.
Participants: The study included 95 participants residing in rural Old Age Homes.
Measurements: For this particular study a pre-designed survey schedule containing Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) Scale and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) were used. Intergroup comparison was performed, Chi-square test performed to find out association between/among variables.
Results: From the study it revealed that out of 78 ‘possibly malnourished’ elderly women, 38 participants (40%) were ‘at risk of malnutrition’ and another 40 participants (44%) were ‘malnourished’. About 53.68% participants having moderate depression, were ‘at risk of malnutrition’, whereas 40% of them having severe depression were ‘malnourished’ (x2=3.427, p<0.001).
Conclusion: High proportion of ‘at risk of malnutrition’ and ‘malnutrition’ associated with presence of psychological stress and different grade of depression were the major areas of concern.