Background: The elderly hill tribe people are one of the vulnerable populations who are facing the non-communicable disease in Thailand under the limitation to access health care services.

Objective: The present study aimed to assess the prevalence and factors associated with depression among the six main hill tribe elderly populations in Thailand.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted. Participants were recruited from 61 hill tribe villages in Chiang Rai province, Thailand who had been identified as one of six main hill tribe groups and age ≥60 years old. A validated questionnaire was developed and used for data collection. A geriatric depressive scale (GDS-15), physical health assessment forms, and quality of life assessing form were used for assessing the depression and physical health among the participants. A simple random method was used to select the participants. Logistic regression was used for evaluating the associations between variables at the significant level alpha = 0.05.

Results: Total of 717 participants were recruited into the study with mean age at 70.07 years (SD = 7.53), 50.3% were women, 6.1% had no Thai national identification card, 71.1% were Buddhist. 94.1% were illiterate, 93.7% were living alone, 37.4% had no occupation, and 88.8% had income less than 5,000 baht/month (165$US). The health assessment showed 14.5% had BMI at underweight level, 14.8% drank alcohol, and 20.1% smoked, 31.4% had HT, 10.2% had DM, 3.5% had heart disease, 43.0% had oral problem, 25.7% had gout, 19.7% had problem of cognitive impairment, and 51.1% had overall low level of quality of life. The overall prevalence of depression was 32.9%. The multiple logistic regression model showed that two variables were associated with depression among the hill tribe elderly population; tribe and smoking behaviors. Akha tribe had a greater chance to develop depression than Hmong with OR = 2.06 (95% CI = 1.18-3.60, p-value = 0.011), Lahu had a greater chance to develop depression than Hmong with OR = 1.81 (95% CI = 1.02-3.20, p-value = 0.041), and Lisu had a greater chance to develop depression than Hmong with OR = 1.77 (95% CI = 1.01-3.11, p-value = 0.046). The hill tribe elderly who quit smoking had a greater chance to develop depression than those who did not smoke with OR = 1.53 (95% CI = 1.02-2.34, p-value = 0.049).

Conclusion: One-third of hill tribe elderly population have depression, therefore Thailand needs to develop a standard tool for assessing depression in the hill tribe elderly, and also needs to develop the health promotion program to improve this problem in these particular populations.

Keywords: Depression, Hill tribe, Elderly, Prevalence