Objective:The study's goal has been to identify depressive symptoms in elderly people living in communities or groups in the municipality of Petrolina, Pernambuco State, Brazil, through the Geriatric Depression Scale. Methods: It is a cross-sectional study that was carried out with 185 elderly people. Three structured and semistructured instruments were applied, including the Geriatric Depression Scale. Descriptive statistics and the logit model with Odds Ratio (OR) were used. The Kruskal Wallis and Mann Whitney tests were applied in order to evaluate the scale score. A significance level of 5% and a confidence interval of 95% were used. Results: The active elderly showed 36.2% of depressive symptoms. The multivariate model presented the gender (for men OR=0.31; p-value=0.043) and the health perception (OR=10.27 and p-value=0.001) as depression associated factors. Conclusion: There is a need for implementing strategies aiming to prevent depressive symptoms in elderly people, and also taking into consideration the factors associated with its occurrence.

Stroke is an emergency associated with morbidity and mortality, being the second leading cause of death and disability in adults worldwide. The Ministry of Health recommends using the guidelines of the Brazilian Society of Cerebrovascular Diseases (SBDCV) as a protocol for emergency care in Brazilian health services. However, it is known that there is a shortage of resources for stroke care in Brazil, especially in emergencies located outside the capitals. There was a need to analyze health practices related to stroke according to the reality of Serra Talhada/PE. The objective was to describe the emergency assistance provided to stroke cases in the emergency services of the municipality of Serra Talhada/ PE and to carry out a comparative analysis in relation to the guidelines. For this purpose, a descriptive, cross-sectional study was carried out, whose population included stroke cases admitted to the services and the sampling was of the consecutive type. The research instruments were the Individual Registration Form and Self-Reported Questionnaire of Health Conditions/Situations, in addition to the Evaluation Form prepared according to the protocol recommended by the SBDCV. The sample consists of 143 participants, 54.5% male and 53.1% mixed race. Most of the sample is composed of elderly people and has hypertension and diabetes mellitus. 74.1% do not follow a diet and 87.4% are sedentary. 30.8% of the sample is a smoker and 16.1% is an alcoholic. 88.8% of the sample had a diagnosis of ischemic stroke. 90.2% had their blood pressure measured. The parameters of capillary blood glucose in 37.8%, oxygen saturation in 47.6%, temperature in 69.9% and electrocardiogram in 38.5% were not evaluated. Blood count was requested for 82.5%. Renal function was not requested for 35%, ionogram for 38.5%, fasting glucose for 66.4% and coagulogram for 93%. With this, it was noticed that the initial care for stroke in