Retirement age depression in the elderly

Abstract

     The current research aims to identify retirement age depression among the elderly and its prevalence among them, and to identify the significance of statistical differences according to the gender variable (males - females) of the diagnosed sample. In order to achieve the researcher’s goals, the researchers built a retirement age depression scale in accordance with the standards of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The fifth scale for mental disorders and illnesses (DSM-5, 2013). The number of items in the scale reached (17) items, and after verifying its psychometric properties of validity, discrimination and reliability, reliability was calculated using the Cronbach’s alpha method on a reliability sample of (100) males and females. The reliability coefficient for the retirement age depression scale reached (0.89). This indicates that the stability of the scale is good. It was applied to a sample of (400) elderly male and female retirees, which was chosen randomly for the year 2023. The results were the following:

1- The prevalence of depression at retirement age reached (15.2%).

2- There are statistically significant differences in menopausal depression according to gender in favor of females.