Disability and alexithymia in elderly people living at home in the center of gümüşhane

2. ABSTRACT Disability and Alexithymia in Elderly People Living at Home in The Center of Gümüşhane Disability and alexithymia in old age are the significant concepts that can affect the health conditions and social lives of people. The aim of this study is to evaluate the characteristics of disability and alexithymia that the elderly, living in Gümüşhane city centre, suffer from. This cross-sectional study is made by reaching 437 of 450 elderly people (65 and above) registered to 14 family practice units located in Gümüşhane city centre, selected by systematic sampling. Sampling was performed with a questionnaire, involving Questionare Brief Disability (BDQ) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), in face to face interviews. Results were evaluated using a statistical sofware program. The average age of the elderly enrolled in the study is 74.32±7.15, of which 63.4% are female and 36.6 % are male. While the avarage score of BDQ of elderly is 10.25±5.03, their TAS-20 average score is 49.28±9.58. A different range of grades of disability was determined with 86% of the elderly. It was determined that being a woman, widowed/divorced, having a low level of education, having any kind of mental problems, increase in the constraint in mobilization, lack of exercise, having a poor health of perception regarding general-physical-mental-emotional and social health levels boost the average scores of both BDQ and TAS-20 (p<0.05). The total alexithymia scores of those who have been exposed to any kind of violence throughout their lives and those who cannot express themselves or partly able to do this within the family were higher than the scores of those who were not exposed to violence and those who have no problems in expressing themselves. A weak positive correlation was determined between BDQ and TAS-20, TAS-1 and TAS-2 scores (p=0.000). In conclusion, while the disability score of the elderly in the study was close to the scale average, the alexithymia scores were below the scale average. Rehabilitive studies aimed at the factors that affect the disability and alexithymia in the elderly should be planned and implemented. Key Words: Old age, Disability, Alexithymia