Quality of life and risk of depression in the youngest-old and middle-old women and men

Abstract

Introduction and objective The currently observed progressive aging of societies has an impact on the occurrence of problems affecting the quality of life in many spheres. While focused on a mixed gender population, deliberately stratified into the youngest-oldest and middle-aged individuals, the study aimed to determine whether their subjective assessment of overall quality of life was in any way correlated with the risk of depression. Material and methods A study sample of 164 free-living community dwellers aged 65–84 years was investigated with the use of WHOQOL-BREF and GDS-15 surveys. The data collected was subsequently analysed by Chi-square test, Student’s t test, Mann Whitney U test, and Spearman rank correlation. Results Significant differences were established in the overall quality of life in terms of select psychological variables in women from Groups I and II (p=0.006). In the groups stratified by age angender, significant negative correlations were noted (p<0.001) between respective domains under study. Conclusions Women from the youngest-oldest group rated their quality of life higher in the psychological domain, compared with the middle-aged group. Neither age nor gender differentiated individual susceptibility to depression, even though approx. 30% of all respondents were ultimately established as being at such risk. Individuals established as less prone to depression rated their overall quality of life as higher in the respective domains. The respondents‘ subjective assessment indicated no correlation with the risk of depression.

Keywords

• quality of life
• community dwellers
• public health