1. EXPLORING THE LEVEL OF WELL-BEING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MORBIDITY OF ELDERLY IN THE COMMUNITY
Anna Kavga*, Urania Govina**, Eugenia Vlachou***, Ioannis Kalemikerakis*, Georgia Toulia*, Athena Kalokerinou****
* Lecturer, Department of Nursing, Technological and Educational Institute of Athens, Greece
** Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing, Technological and Educational Institute of Athens, Greece
*** Associate Professor, Department of Nursing, Technological and Educational Institute of Athens, Greece
**** Professor in Community Nursing, Faculty of Nursing, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Introduction. The rapid increase of the elderly in the last decades led community nurses to reassess their goals.
In contrast, the single people (unmarried, widows, divorced) and the lonely people mentioned less level of well-being than married and those who lived with somebody else (p=0.06 and p=0.036 respectively). The statistical analysis with Pearson coefficient showed “modest” to “strong” negative correlation of the Well-being to the Anxiety and Depression (ρ= ρ=0.701 and p<0.01). The increase of the psychological morbidity correlates with decrease of the family’s well being. Hence, there is a positive “modest” correlation between social support and well-being (ρ=0.455, p<0.01). The increase of social support correlates with the increase of well-being (Table 1). The multiple linear regression analysis revealed that the model’s factors accounted for 16% of the well-being variance (R2=0.162 , p=0.04 , SE=12.85). Related to the family situation, the single people had less score in the well-being scale 7.3 points in relation to the married people (B=7.25 , p=0.05).
Purpose of the study was to explore the levels of Anxiety, Depression and Social Support which influences the well-being of the elderly in the community.
Materials and Methods. The sample was 102 older adults above 65 years of age. The method of the sample’s selection was the purposive sampling. Demographic characteristics and the scales of Well-being (FMWB) (range 10-80), Anxiety (Hamilton Anxiety Scale-HAS) (range 0-56), Depression (Geriatric Depression Screening Scale-GDSS-15) (range 0-15) and of the Social Support (Social Support Index-SSI) (range -68) were used. The Cronmbach’s a of the scales was , , and respectively.
Table 1. Correlations between the Questionnaires
HAS
SIS
FMWB
GDSS
---
-0,347**
-0,632**
0,565**
----
0,455**
-0,329**
-0,701**
Results. The greater proportion of the sample was women (53,9%) with average age years (±6.7). The most of them (46.1%) were married and lived with one member of their family (52%). The 73% suffered from cardiovascular diseases and 73.5% did not mention mobility disorders. The elderly reported “modest” sense of well being, “slight” to “modest” anxiety, “modest” depression and “modest” sense of social support. Men mentioned higher level of well-being than women (p=0.79).
** p< 0.01
Conclusions. The fact that many old people live alone probably influences their psychological morbidity and decreases the sense of family well-being.
The community nurses assess the social support needs, identify the high risk people, design and apply health promotion programs and promote active aging.