Journal of Bone Research and Reports

Physical and Psychological Problems of the Elderly at an Aged Care Center

ABSTRACT
As the world is aging, there is a growing interest in various morbidity patterns among the elderly population. This study aims to find out the physical and psychological problems among elderly people and to determine the factors associated with the problems. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out among 46 elderly people who were residents at the Aged Care Center in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Elderly aged 60-years and above were selected purposefully for the study. Physical disability, geriatric depression, cognitive impairment was assessed using the Barthel index, Geriatric depression scale, Elderly Cognitive Assessment Questionnaire respectively. The association between sociodemographic data and physical disability, depression and cognitive impairment were also evaluated by using bivariate analysis. Results: The mean age of the respondents was 73.3 ± 7.41 years and among them 52% were females. Among the participants, the prevalence of physical disabilities was 17.39% and the commonest problem was climbing the stairs. The Prevalence of cognitive impairment was 13.04% and the commonest impairment was found in memory recall. The Prevalence of geriatric depression was 32.6%. The prevalence of depression and cognitive impairment were higher among unmarried, illiterate and unemployed respondents. Overall physical and psychological impairment was higher in the age group 80 to 89 years and also in females. Conclusion: Increasing age, particularly those who belonged to age group 80-89 years were at significant risk for physical disability, depression and cognitive impairment.
INTRODUCTION Aging is an inevitable process of life. In this 21st century, with the advancement in medical science and technology, reducing mortality rate, increasing life expectancies and declining fertility rate there is an increment in the trend of population aging Aging presents both challenges and opportunities. The World Health Organization has therefore taken the slogan "Ageing and Health" on the world health day 2012 to address this phenomenon in a way that is affordable and sustainable for families and society By 2025 the elderly population globally is expected to rise more than 1.2 billion, with close to 75% of it in developing countries, thus making population aging a great challenge . Earlier the aging process was restricted to developed countries is now the place of population aging is much faster and rapid in developing countries compared to developed countries Significantly, the most rapid increases in the 65 and older population are occurring in developing countries, which will see a jump of 140 percent by 2030 In a study, it shows that in Bangladesh the elderly population will be increased from about 8 million in 2001 to 44 million in 2050 We are aging not just as individuals or communities, but as a world. As the trend of aging is expected to be more rapid in developing nations because of this; developing nations will have very little time than the developed nations to adapt to the consequences of the aging populationThe elderly, in general, face various challenges that are associated with physical and psychological changes commonly associated with the aging process. The main challenges for older people are noncommunicable diseases. Urinary tract infection is a very common problem, but it is more prominent in elderly patients and its average prevalence is 25-40% Correspondence to: Gyawali M, Associate Professor, National Academic for Medical Science (NAMS), Nepal, Tel: +91-11-26588718; E-mail: meegyawali@gmail.com Received: May 25, 2019, Accepted: March 05, 2019, Published: March 12, 2019 Citation: Gyawali M, Khan A, Chaudhury R, Khadka R (2020) Physical and Psychological Problems of the Elderly at Aged Care Center. J Gerontol Geriatr Res 9: 509. doi: 10.35248/2167-0374.20.9.509 Copyright: © 2020 Gyawali M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords: Elderly people; Physical health problem; Psychological health problem

Author(s):

Gyawali M1 *, Khan A2 , Chaudhury R3 , Khadka

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