Functional capacity variation in older adults with depression and fall history living in a long term care institution to elderly

Abstract

The general aim of this research was identify the variation of functional capacity in older adults with depression and fall history living in a long term care institution to elderly. Among the specific objectives was included the identification of the level of depression in old adults through the Beck Depression Inventory; the verification of functional capacity of old adults with depression and historical falls through the Barthel Index and the connection to the age, genus, the time of exposure to light, the sleep quality and the realization of physical activity with the functional capacity of the old adults. In this study participated old adults wider or equal than 60 years old and they were not in exclusion criterions’s sample, living in a long-permanence institution situated in a district of Rio Grande do Sul. This research was classificated like quantitative, qualitative and observative. The data were analysed with the statistics program SPSS version 14.0 for Windows. In the analyse of data we did not verify statistic difference in functional capacity’variation in old adults with depression and historical falls. Through the analyses we concluded that did not occur functional capacity’s statistic variation in this kind of old adults. KEYWORDS: old adults; functional capacity; depression; fall; exposure to light; sleep; physical activity.