ABSTRACT
As popular wisdom has it, elderly people and elderly people who live in rural areas in particular, are at increased risk for mental illness. Both support and refutation for this view can be found in abundance [1, 2]. One key finding to emerge from the literature is a link between physical and mental illness. There is considerable evidence to suggest that rural aged persons experience symptoms of physical ill-health at a rate significantly higher than is typically the case among their age peers in general. The obvious question then, is, do they also show higher rates of emotional distress?
