The Study of Socio-Cultural Program for Mental Health Promotion and Depressive Prevention in the Elderly Donmon Sub-district, Satuek District, Buriram Province

Abstract

The purposes of this action research were 1) to study social - cultural programs to promote mental health and prevent depressive disorder in the elders, 2) to study and compare the results of mental health and risk of depressive disorder in the elderly. The samples were the elderly in Donmon sub-district , Stuek District, Buriram Province who were selected by purposive sampling method. There were 124 elderly divided into experimental group, and a control group. Each group consisted of 62 people. The study was divided into four phases. The first phase aimed to understand the situation. The second phase aimed to set the program to promote mental health and prevent depressive disorder in the social – cultural. The third period, it was trial the program. The fourth period, it was evaluation the program. The tools used in this study were; 1) mental health assessment Thailand (Thai Mental Health Indicators TMHI-55); 2) the 2 Q assessment depressive disorder risk; 3) the focus group guide, and 4) the social - cultural programs to promote mental health and prevent depressive disorder in the elderly activities which included; educating, the exercise which used the Folk local music, the bundles eating, Home visits, and competition exercises. The program has been determined the quality, as Index of Item-Objective Congruence as 0.87. The results showed that the mental health average score of the elderly who participated in the program increased more than others. The risk of depressive was reduced. When comparing average score of the mental health before and after using the program, it was found that the average score of the experimental group was significantly different (p<0.05), as well as the average score of the mental health between the experimentalgroup and the control group after the program was also significantly different (p <0.05). Such programs can promote and prevent the mental health problems in the elderly people effectively.