Prevalence of Dementia in the Community: a Rural‐Urban Comparison from Madras, India

Two studies to estimate the prevalenlce of dementia, one in a rural and the other in an urban area, were conducted in Madras in South India. Seven hundred and fifty people aged 60 years and over, selected using the cluster sampling technique, constituted the rural sample. The urban sample comprised 1,300 people 65 years and over, selected using the multistage stratified random sampling technique. Both samples were interviewed using the Geriatric Mental State schedule (GMS). The prevalence of dementia was 3.5% in the rural and 2.7% in the urban setting and increased exponentially with age. Rural prevalence estimates were higher than the urban. Though gender differences were negligible in the rural setting, dementia rates were significantly higher among urban males in contrast to urban females. The paper compares the findings of the two studies and discusses their implications for India's growing elderly population in the context of age, literacy and gender.