The effects of fragility, balance and depression on daily living activities in geriatrics

In order for the aging population to be in active life and to prevent disability, the word should be known in the elderly and losses due to cascading diseases should be reduced. In this direction, in our work; It was aimed to examine the effects of frailty, balance and depression on daily living activities in geriatric individuals. Our study was carried out by including 85 geriatric individuals affiliated to the No.1 Health Center in Amasya Central district on a voluntary basis. Mini Mental State Test was used for cognitive level assessment, Berg Balance Scale (BBS) for balance, Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) for depression, and Lawton Brody Instrumental Daily Living Activity Scale (IDLA) for daily living activities. The mean age of our study, conducted with 85 geriatric individuals, was 73.53 ± 6.785; 56.6% (48) are women and 43.5% (37) are men. In our study, where we made the group distribution according to the fragility, the fragile group was 33 (38.8%), the pre-fragile group was 32 (37.6%), and the normal group was 20 (23.5%). The BBS mean of the participants was 35.51 ± 12.29; The mean GDS was 3.89 ± 3.15 and the average IDLA was 6.51 ± 1.93. While there is a medium level negative relationship between IDLA and fragility (r = -0.391) and GDS (r = -0.556); It was determined that there is a strong positive correlation between IDLA and BBS (r = 0.691) (p˂0.05). According to the results of the regression analysis; balance, depression and vulnerability were found to explain activities of daily living with a rate of 46.6%. As a result of our work; Frailty, balance, and depression were found to be factors associated with independence in activities of daily living, which are the main objectives of rehabilitation programs. It is predicted that the effectiveness of the rehabilitation strategies to be developed by taking these factors into consideration will increase.