Examining the levels of pain, depression and life quality in elderly

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the levels of pain, depression and quality of life in elderly individuals. MATERIALS AND METHOD: The present study was designed to be a descriptive study and adopted cross-sectional research model and was performed in the internal medicine clinics of a state hospital between 01.06.2016 and 01.01.2017. The study included 319 patients over 65 years of age. The data were collected via an introductory form prepared by the researcher containing the socio-demographic characteristics of the patients, Geriatric Pain Scale (GPS), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), World Health Organization Quality of Life Scale, WHO Quality of Life-8 Short Form, Katz Daily Living Activities and Lawton and Brady Instrumental Daily Living Activities Scale was collected by face-to-face interviews. Statistical analyses of the study data were carried out by percentile and mean values analyses, the Mann Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis H and Spearman correlation tests. RESULTS: The mean score of the participants for the WHO Quality of Life module was 76.49 ± 8.44 while WHO Quality of Life-8 Short Form scale was 3.53 ± 057 and the mean GPS score of was 12.15±7.31. It was determined that 14.7% of elderly patients had possible depression while 29.7% had definite symptoms of depression. It was found that sex and income level affected the level of depression and pain in the elderly individuals while marital status only significantly affected the pain level. It was observed that the quality of life decreased and the dependency and pain levels increased with the increasing age. It was also found that as the levels of depression and the level of pain increased negatively affected the quality of life. It was determined that increased quality of life decreased the depression. CONCLUSION: The quality of life of the elderly patients was found to be above the average. Depression neglect and depression were detected almost half of the elderly participants. It was seen that pain and depression negatively affected the quality of life. Keywords: pain, depression, internal diseases, quality of life, elderly